


Ghosts That We Knew

by uchiha_s



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jon died in the final battle, Past Jon Snow/Sansa Stark - Freeform, Political Jon, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2019-08-08 12:39:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16429574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uchiha_s/pseuds/uchiha_s
Summary: Peace between the northerners and the free folk was what Jon had fought for, died for, wanted more than almost anything. There was only one thing that Jon had wanted more than that—secret though that want had been—and Tormund realized that he was about to get everything Jon had ever wanted.Tormund turned his mind from Lord Crow. Dead men didn't speak, and after all, Jon too had always done what needed to be done. He would have understood.It seemed Tormund would be stealing a woman after all.—Tensions mount between the northerners and the free folk. Sansa, Queen in the North, sees only one path before her—brutal and unwanted though it may be.





	1. Crypt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mellypea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellypea/gifts).



_Hold me still; bury my heart next to yours._

* * *

_The free folk attacked us again._

_They’ll never stop._

_What will you do about it, my queen?_

The hall of the Great Keep had never felt so small, the air so stifling, as it had today. Ser Davos and Brienne had been staring at her so expectantly— _everyone_ had been staring at her so expectantly, as though she ought to know what to do.

_Your Grace,_ Brienne had pressed quietly as Sansa had sat there in panic.

Hours later, she was still writhing and squirming with shame at how unsteady her voice had seemed. Before the battle—before she had lost everyone—she had somehow known the way. Her compass had always pointed toward a future with Bran, with Arya, with—

—She would not think of him.

"Still awake?" Gendry's voice was thick with sleep. In her peripheral vision she saw him raise his face from the pillow—he always slept with abandon, on his stomach, splayed like a star—to look at her with those burning blue eyes. Sansa lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. 

Earlier, the fire had made shifting, flickering shapes among the rafters, and she had lost herself to the patterns as though reading tea leaves. Now the fire was nearly dead and she was staring at flat, impenetrable darkness. Breathing was hard, like a heavy stone weighed on her breast.

She didn't reply because her throat was suddenly tight. She felt like a little girl, once again on the verge of tears, so she swallowed and stared into the dark, unblinking and not breathing, until the urge had passed. She felt Gendry sigh, a rush of warmth against her bare shoulder, and then his strong arm was slung across her and he was pulling her to him.

Affection had not been part of their deal. She didn't turn into his embrace, but she did allow herself to be pulled closer to him, a compromise that was dangerous because it blurred the line in the snow they had drawn between them. He smelled good, all musk and smoke and salt. Her skin was still smeared with coal from his fingertips, from earlier in the evening when he had taken her, in ways animal and searing. 

After the first time that Gendry had smeared her pale skin with coal, she had stared at the silvery reflection of her body in her looking glass, shocked to find long smudges along her jaw, across her breasts and hips—and other places, too. After so many years of only being touched for violence it had been jarring to see evidence of something else—though of what Gendry’s touch was evidence, she did not know. Passion? Grief? Loneliness? Or simply the inexplicable but relentless human drive to seek each other’s skin, to lose oneself in another?

Gendry had been in the hall for the assembly today, too. He had seen the rage of her bannermen, had seen her flounder so helplessly. She had wished he had not been there. She liked him to be her escape. 

She had not been so humiliated in years.

Once upon a time she had thought she would be good at this. 

_But once upon a time, you had_ him—

—She would not think of him.

Sansa traced her fingertips over the corded muscle of Gendry's forearm, which rested across her breasts. 

"I failed today," she admitted at last. “I’m supposed to make sure the free folk and the northerners get along—it’s my _one_ purpose—and I can’t do it. They got along just fine under—“ she halted. 

She would not think of him. “I failed."

"You didn't fail, Sansa,” he said drowsily. “It was _one_ skirmish, and all they did was steal some horses. Go back to sleep. You need rest.”

"I can’t.”

It was suddenly far too hot under the furs so she kicked them off, and Gendry raised his head again to look down her naked body, then up at her, a question in his eyes. Even in the darkness his eyes were so blue, blue in a way she did not often see in the north, a place where all color had been bled away, seeping under ground, until everything was grey, grey like _his_ eyes—

—She would not think of him. 

He covered her mouth with his; it wasn't a kiss in the way that she had dreamed of as a little girl, for there was nothing romantic about it. It was perfunctory, but that did not lessen its value to her. He shifted on top of her, his body hard and warm, engulfing her. She closed her eyes and bit her lip as she felt his fingers slip inside of her—after so many months he knew just what to do—and tried to lose herself as she had so easily in the beginning.

She was not thinking about him when they did this—but she knew he was not thinking about her, either. They were proxies for the people they had lost.

She came with a shudder and gasp and then he was inside of her, one hand braced against the wall behind her head, the other gripping her hip painfully tight. He pounded into her, endlessly it seemed, but she did not wish for it to end. It was impossible to think when he did this, and that was what she wanted. 

At last he found his release and collapsed beside her, gasping and slick with sweat, and for a time they lay beside each other, not speaking and merely catching their breath. 

But soon he drifted off again, and she remained awake, and she knew, with growing certainty, what she _really_ needed.

Sansa slipped from the bed and dressed in her silks and a robe. It was warm in her chambers—thanks to both the hot spring and to what she had been doing with Gendry—but it would be cold in the crypts. With a last look at Gendry, his face buried in the pillows once more and his strong back still streaked with marks from her nails, she took one of the torches and slipped out of the lord's chambers.

The halls of Winterfell were navy in the darkness, paneled in silver from the moonlight. Ghosts rushed past her as she walked, ghosts of Arya and Bran and Rickon and Robb and—

She walked faster, the torch trembling in her grip.

—She would not think of him.

One last dash through the beaten-down snow of the courtyard, and then she was in the crypts, her breath clouding in the air and her whole body shivering with cold. The air was still in the darkness, still as death, yet her ears throbbed as though the wind howled around her as she walked along this hall of dead men.

Stone likenesses of Rickon, Bran, Arya, and Robb were turned gold by her torchlight. She passed them by, gazing up at their unseeing eyes. It had been the first thing she had done, after the Battle: having their likeness made for their crypts. Each time she came here, she visited each of them for a long time, but tonight she walked past them, and came to the likeness that had been made last; the likeness that, for so many reasons, brought her the most pain.

Jon's solemn Stark face gazed ahead, tall above her. The torchlight flashed and flared, and shadows danced behind him like dragons, and a thrill of terror rippled through her before settling. 

There were no dragons here, no matter how much Queen Daenerys insisted that her nephew was a dragon. She had insisted that he did not belong buried in the crypts of Winterfell. That had been Sansa’s hardest fight of all—bringing Jon's bones back home, back where they belonged.

_You were supposed to come back._ She stared up at him, full of acidic anger. 

_I can't do this without you. You trusted the North to me and_ —

She bit her lip. She hadn’t cried in so long; it was not a luxury that the Queen in the North could ever have. She dropped down to the base of Jon’s statue, and leaned her head against the unyielding stone, in a way she had never been allowed to lean against Jon in life. 

Ever since she had left Ramsay, Jon had been her strength, breathing life back into her and giving her new purpose. He had trusted her, he had cared for her—he had believed in her. _For no reason,_ she thought bitterly, thinking again in agony of how helpless she had been today. She had been floundering since Jon’s death, but she’d been desperately, pathetically trying to hide it. There would be no cavalry, no reassurance. She was in this alone. _Once again._

She’d gotten to know what it was like to be alone, but then she’d found Jon again and had thought, so foolishly, that she would never be alone again. She had gotten so good at being alone, so good at relying on herself and herself alone, yet here she was—brittle and crumbling like stone. 

She hugged the furs around her and closed her eyes, trying to hold onto the memory of Jon’s embrace like wisps of smoke. Sometimes she sensed the imminent, inevitable fading of memory. Just as the edges of Robb’s face had become blurred with time, just as she would lay awake at night trying to hear her mother’s voice in her head, back in King’s Landing—so too would she soon begin to forget the details of Jon. She knew it, was desperate to prevent it, but also knew it was a hopeless battle. 

_I don’t know how to do this, Jon._

_You were supposed to come back._

“Sansa?” 

She jolted upright, shivering. Gendry was approaching, holding a torch and wrapped in furs. He walked past Arya’s likeness, careful to not look at it, and stood over Sansa. She saw his gaze, blue turned gold in the torchlight, rest on Jon above her. He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. “You shouldn’t be down here.” 

A prickle of rage. Then, emptiness. _We’re strangers, really._ She knew Gendry’s body better than she’d known any man’s, yet she knew nothing of the secrets of his heart—nor did he know hers. This stranger held out his warm, strong hand and helped her to her feet. 

“This is my home,” she protested, re-wrapping herself in the furs and trembling in the cold. Gendry tilted his head, studying her sadly. “Why shouldn’t I be down here?” 

Gendry held up the torchlight so that it flickered over Jon’s likeness. 

“He’s not down here, Sansa.” 

Perhaps he knew one secret of her heart after all. 

“I know.” She turned away from him, and stared up at Jon. 

"What if we ran away?" His voice was low, quiet. 

Sansa's eyes burned again. The torchlight flickered and she saw dragons once more. "No one said _you_ had to do this."

"Jon did."

She stared at the stone and heard Gendry scoff.

“He's _gone_ , and that was a different time. We could run away, forget this. Leave the northerners and the free folk to sort things out—or not sort things out. It doesn’t have to matter to us.”

They stood there, not looking at each other, each of them staring ahead. Her chest was tight, painfully tight, her lungs constricted as she stared over the precipice of something.

There was a dark part of her that wanted to run. A dark part of her that was tired of fighting, tired of strife, tired of being Sansa Stark. A dark part of her that could not bear to exist in a world without Jon in it. 

_I’m tired of fighting,_ Jon had pleaded with her, once. 

Now she knew how he felt. 

_But this is my home,_ she thought, looking up and down the line of statues of all the people she had loved. One day, her bones would rest here, too, behind a statue of her own likeness. _Beside Jon’s._

"I can't run. This is my home. And Jon trusted his people to me. I've spent my life running. I can't run anymore." She braved another look at Jon's stone face. "This is my home," she said again, her voice stronger.

"This isn't a home anymore." Gendry's voice was so low, so soft, it was hard to hear him even in the fatal quiet of the crypts. "It's a tomb."

She knew he was looking at Arya's stone likeness; she felt it when he looked away.

They stood there for some time.

"My family died fighting for our safety," she said. "It started with my father trying to protect me. I have to do this."

_You were supposed to come back to me._

She felt her jaw begin to tremble so she clenched her teeth. She heard Gendry turn away and let out a sigh of frustration.

"Don't stay down here too long. You'll catch your death." 

His voice wasn't so strong on the last word; he seemed to have realized, too late, that his words were ill-chosen. She heard his boots scuff on the stone as he walked away, leaving her alone with the people she had loved.

_You were supposed to come back to me_ , she thought again, desperately, staring at Jon. _You promised._

Nothing had been so cruel as the months and months of agony, of stewing in her own confusion and shame—horrible shame—at the thoughts she had been having about her half-brother—only to learn he hadn't been her brother at all; and then, so cruelly, only to lose him so soon after that. There hadn't been enough _time_ , and then he'd been killed and it was all over, and with one slash of a sword all of her hopes had been taken from her.

She wiped her tears with the heel of her hand.

_The North is yours,_ he'd said. She would never forget the way he had looked at her.

Jon had loved the north, and he had loved the free folk. It was a part of him. Now it was all she had left of him.

And she loved Jon. 

She could do this.

She stayed in the crypts a little bit longer; she drank in the faces of the people she had loved, because she knew she would not be coming back down here for a very long time. It would only lead to weakness, to dark rumination, and she would need her strength. So she drank in their faces and then she turned away from them and left the crypts.

She was Sansa Stark of Winterfell, and she would heal the North in Jon's stead. She would do it for Jon, for her family, for everyone she had loved and lost.

And she felt her skin turn to steel once more, and if the Sansa who left the crypts was colder and harder than the Sansa who had entered, then so be it. Perhaps she was merely a stone likeness too. Perhaps the real Sansa—that sweet, soft girl who had loved silks and songs—had died with the rest of them.

* * *

“We’ll visit him; we’ll bring gifts of food and iron, and then we’ll negotiate,” Sansa explained the next morning, with Davos, Brienne, Podrick, Sam, Gilly, and Gendry surrounding her—her own small council. She turned away to stop herself from looking at them beseechingly, from searching their faces for reaction to her idea. She could not be a helpless little girl. She had to be like Jon.

“It’s not a poor idea,” Davos hedged, “and Giantsbane is a fair man. He’ll hear us out. But we need more than gifts. We need a strategy. He’s not a man to be flattered and wooed with presents; he’s a practical man who’s led armies. He’ll want _more_.” He looked between them. “We need a strategy,” he said again.

She already had her strategy.

Sansa drew in a steeling breath, thinking of Jon. _The North is yours._ She turned back to her council. Gendry was leaning against the far wall, strong arms crossed over his hard chest. She did not meet his eyes but instead looked to Davos and Brienne, whose counsel she trusted the most. She had to be like Jon.

“I have a strategy,” she said calmly. Davos’ brow twitched; Brienne straightened. “We need to present a unified front if we wish to keep our independence from Queen Daenerys. The free folk and the northerners _cannot_ be divided; we must be one people. We also need to present a legitimate system of ruling; something Queen Daenerys will understand and respect.”

The room was ringing with silence. All eyes were on her. “There’s only one way to do both—”

“You want to _marry_ Tormund?” Sam blurted out in shock, and the effect was incredible: Podrick drew in a gasp, Brienne stepped forward, and Davos choked.

Gendry did not react.

Sansa looked between them and clasped her hands before her.

“I-if no better plan emerges,” she replied, her face growing hot. “I’ve given it considerable thought and I see no better plan. The northerners will never respect the free folk, and the free folk will never follow our laws unless we are united. Tormund Giantsbane loved and respected Jon, so the free folk did as well. And the northerners will always follow a Stark… The marriage would be taken seriously.”

Once upon a time she had cried herself to sleep, thinking, _no one will ever marry me for love._ Then she had found Jon again and she had caught herself thinking, just before she drifted off to sleep, dreamily that _someone might,_ before the sweet thought would curdle with her shame. She had never known such sweetness as Jon’s eyes on her, as Jon’s soft voice caressing her, touching her with a gentleness that she had forgotten after so many years of pain. She gripped the back of the chair in front of her.

“The free folk don’t give a damn about marriage,” Gendry said suddenly, shocking everyone. He never said a word at these meetings, and had even asked Sansa why she insisted that he attend them. Defiantly, Sansa met his eyes as he continued. “The northerners will respect the marriage, but the free folk won’t.”

“I think if it were anyone but Tormund, you’d be right,” Sam interjected thoughtfully, oblivious as usual to the tension. Sansa felt Gilly’s watchful gaze on her, looking between her and Gendry a little too carefully. “But they respect Tormund. It might work.”

“Do you have a better plan in mind?” Sansa asked Gendry, and she gestured to the room at large. “Please share if so. I have little desire to marry _again_ for political reasons.”

“I don’t,” Gendry admitted. “But I know what poor folk think of kings and queens getting married.”

“And what do they think?” she asked archly, raising her brows, crossing her arms over her breast, remembering his own arm brushing her breast just the night before.

Gendry’s square jaw was set, and she watched a muscle leap as he ground his teeth, regarding her with those blazing blue eyes.

“They don’t care.”

An awkward silence followed; no one seemed to know what to do or say. Gilly was the one to save them.

“It can’t hurt to bring up the idea to Tormund, can it?” she suddenly said in a tremulous voice, looking around the room. “He’s a good man. He’s honest. He loves his people, just like Queen Sansa—Sansa, I mean,” she corrected hastily; Sansa had insisted that she not be called Queen, “just like Sansa does.” 

“It can’t hurt,” Davos agreed slowly, reluctantly; she could see his clever mind turning over the idea.

Sansa looked to Brienne, watched the woman shuffle from side to side, touch her sword at her hip pensively.

“I defer to you, Lady Sansa,” she said at last.

Thus it was settled. Podrick was sent to Tormund’s camp at Castle Black, to ask for an audience.

Meanwhile, Sansa planned.

She would meet him at Castle Black if possible, she had decided, though she was loathe to go back to Castle Black for all of the many painful memories it held. It would be important for it to be on Giantsbane’s terms, she knew. This could not look like condescension; it had to seem like a deal, like a brokerage—which it truly was. This was her last desperate attempt to mend the tension before it ripped the north apart once more and Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Ashes, rode in and took the last smoldering, wrecked remains of Westeros for herself.

Gilly taught her to braid her hair in the way that the free folk women did; Davos insisted that she would need a sword of her own even if she did not know how to use it, and commissioned a sword for her—and to her surprise, Gendry agreed to make it, and Brienne and Podrick were assigned to teach her the basics.

She needed to enter Castle Black looking like a woman to be feared; she needed to enter Castle Black looking like a woman that the free folk could respect.

She needed to enter Castle Black looking like a woman that Tormund Giantsbane would steal.

* * *

“What do you think she wants?”

Ren was looking expectantly at him as they rode. The Wall loomed before them as they approached. They were returning from hunting— Tormund had taken care to not be at Castle Black when the Queen in the North arrived; he wanted to make it very clear that he was occupied with other matters and would not be at the beck and call of the southerners.

Even _this_ southerner.

 _S-Sansa…_ The blood seeping from Jon Snow’s lips had been brighter than Tormund had expected, as red as any man’s; holding Jon Snow’s head in his lap as he died, Tormund had wondered what sort of blood he had been expecting, and his pain had caught in his throat. Not so long before that moment he had watched Jon Snow come back to life; had teased him for it, even. _I know you’re not a god,_ he’d said.

This time, he had known Jon Snow would not come back to life; this time he had known that this was their final goodbye.

And they had had so many goodbyes.

The grey eyes that Tormund had come to know so well—clever eyes, kind eyes, solemn eyes—had fixed on Tormund then. Jon’s chest had heaved with his final breaths. _Sansa,_ he had choked again. _Please._

He had asked something of Tormund, and in that moment Tormund had taken Jon’s hand in his and nodded once, making a promise that he had since failed to uphold.

He had known it the moment that Sansa Stark had come to Castle Black that he was looking at the deepest, most private secret of this man’s heart. And in the months that had followed Sansa Stark’s arrival, he had felt deeply uncomfortable, knowing he carried a secret that he didn’t feel he had a right to.

Perhaps it was because he had seen how Jon’s eyes—clever eyes, kind eyes, solemn eyes—had lingered on Ygritte’s red hair. Perhaps it was because he had watched Jon lose the people he loved; had learned what Jon’s eyes looked like when he looked at someone he loved.

Then they had learned of Jon’s blood—Targaryen blood, yet mortal blood all the same—and Tormund had watched Jon come to terms with what this meant for his secret, his _real_ secret, the secret he had been harboring for so many years, the secret that had not mattered until Sansa Stark had come to Castle Black.

The Queen in the North was an important southerner, but he hadn’t conceded to a meeting because she was important to _them_. He had only conceded to a meeting because she had been important to Jon, because she had been the person Jon had loved most; because hers was the name that had been on Jon’s lips as he had died, and Tormund had been the only one to hear Lord Crow’s whispered, choked final words.

_Please. S-sansa._

“Giantsbane?” Ren prompted again. “What d’you think she wants? This _Queen_ of the _North_?” His voice crackled with irony as he gestured to the land surrounding them, the _real_ north.

“My cock, probably,” Tormund said with a snort and the men around him laughed.

They went through the tunnel, and Tormund laughed and joked with the rest of them but his mind was elsewhere. It had been some months since he’d let himself think of Jon Snow, for the grief was heavy and he couldn’t afford to show his sadness now—his people needed him. But coming through this tunnel always made Jon linger in the back of his mind like a willful ghost that could not be banished.

They came free from the tunnel and were back in the open air, and Tormund saw a flash of red hair.

They paused.

The courtyard of Castle Black fell silent as the snow fell around them, and for one burning moment he was transported back in time to the moment he had watched Jon’s heart be cut open by another woman with hair kissed by fire.

Across the courtyard, Sansa Stark was staring at him. Her hair was braided like a woman of the free folk’s might be; she had a sword at her hip that was as unfamiliar to her as if she’d grown an extra limb overnight. She was surrounded by her council but she looked like she wore a costume.

Still, she was just as beautiful as he remembered.

_What do you think she wants?_

He knew what she would suggest. She was a southerner, after all, and Tormund knew how southerners solved problems.

Blood in the snow, red Targaryen blood. Jon’s grey eyes pleading with him.

_Please. S-sansa._

How many times had he tried not to notice Jon Snow looking at his supposed half-sister? How many times had he tried not to see Jon’s eyes—clever eyes, kind eyes, solemn eyes—lingering on that red hair? The blue eyes that had been beloved to Jon Snow were on Tormund now.

Everyone was watching, waiting.

He knew he had to do something, but he hadn’t yet decided on how he would handle Sansa’s request—for he knew what she was here for.

He knew what she would suggest.


	2. Ice

_So lead me back; turn south from that place; and close my eyes from my recent disgrace…_

* * *

“The North is divided. If I want to _heal_ Westeros, now is the time to take the North.”

Dany stared out into the grey, humid morning. Smog, even after all these months, still hung low over the remnants of King’s Landing, perpetually blocking out the sun. She did not need to look back at Tyrion and Jorah to know they would be wearing looks of disapproval.

“My Queen,” Tyrion began, haltingly, “while I do see the logic—”

“—Then what else is there?” Dany suppressed a flare of frustration and gripped the edge of the window before her. She drew in a steeling breath, then turned to face her advisors. Behind Jorah, Grey Worm and Missandei exchanged a quick, silent look that Dany could not read, but it made something like anger rise in her throat, making it hard to breathe.

This was what she had fought for, sacrificed _everything_ for. _Viserys, Drogo, Rhaegal, Aegon..._ So why did it feel like she was still fighting, still had not really won anything? This was no different than being marooned in Essos—the only difference, in those dark private moments when she could really be honest with herself, was that now she no longer had a goal to work toward.

She needed a goal.

Anything to stop thinking about _him_.

 _Aegon,_ the skeletons in the Red Keep seemed to whisper.  _Aegon,_ the walls shivered.  _Jon,_ her heart murmured.  _Jon, Jon, Jon..._

She fixed her gaze on Tyrion, whose face—what had remained of it, at any rate—was still bandaged and failing to heal. Some wounds never healed, she knew that better than anyone. Still, she focused on his mismatched eyes, until the rest of his ruined features—she had done that, perhaps not by her own hand but it was her fault all the same—blurred away. “You’ve taught me that I’m too hot-headed, too temperamental. You’ve told me I need to think in terms of logic.” She cast a hand over the map laid out on the table between them. The room was so dark that the map was not readable, yet she knew it by heart. She knew all of the pieces that were not yet hers. “If I cannot use logic, what is left to me?”

“Sometimes, my Queen,” Jorah said, stepping in, “the best action is _no_ action. Trust me—”

“—And exactly _why_ should I trust you, Jorah?”

She would not meet his eyes. She still could not forgive—oh, gods, it was making her eyes burn; she was standing before the man who had slaughtered—no, she would not even think it, or then she might do something…

He faltered, to his credit.

“He knows the North better than you or I, my Queen,” Tyrion cut in swiftly. “And I know Sansa Stark better than any of you.”

A ghost was lingering between them; they were breathing in Aegon Targaryen—Jon Snow. No one spoke his name—his true one _or_ his given one. Tyrion smiled humorlessly, and it made his bandages crinkle. “She may not have dragons, my Queen,” he began, “but I still do not want her as our enemy.”

 _Enemy._ Dany would never forget the way the ice queen’s eyes had lingered on her as her nephew’s corpse—her once-lover’s corpse—was handed to Queen Sansa’s council. The bundle was loaded onto a wagon—a fine one but a wagon all the same—and Queen Sansa’s smile had been that of ice. Unreadable, impenetrable; sparklingly lovely but _cold_.

_We should be sisters but she will never love me._

The anger—and grief—was rising in her throat again. Dany turned from these half-loyal men, turned to look back out over the ruins of King’s Landing. This too was by her hand. This too was her fault.

“Then send a raven. Tell her I'll be paying her a visit...the Queen in the North."

* * *

“The Queen in the North,” said the wildling man beside Tormund, dark-haired and scarred, his lips curling in amusement at the sight of her.

The free folk were staring down at Sansa. They lined the parapets, their gazes judging, and she felt a flare of rage.

 _Jon gave you this castle,_ she boiled, _and now you dare look at me like I do not belong here…_ but she pushed the thought down. She could not show dislike or anger in her eyes. She could not think in such selfish ways; Jon would not have been proud of her for it.

Tormund Giantsbane was still on his horse, staring down at her, his features impassive. She had watched him roar with laughter when Jon had been alive, had watched him tease and beguile—or at least attempt to beguile—Brienne. She had seen him as a kind man, a warm man, a man with an infectious sense of humor. A burning flame.

She had not known his eyes could be so cool, his mouth set so hard and firm. He was unknowable as the Wall itself, and just as cold. His eyes were more shrewd than she had realized, and with a jolt of anxiety she saw now why Jon had so trusted this man that had seemed so silly, so foolish, so friendly to her before. Above her on his horse, snow on his shoulders, he seemed a warrior, terrible and dangerous, his face carved from icy stone, and she wondered now if she could possibly bring herself to stand before this man in a godswood in the unlikely event that he did consent to marry her.

“Queen Sansa has requested to speak with you in private, Tormund Giantsbane,” announced Brienne in a loud, clear, unafraid voice. The man did not even leer at Brienne as Sansa had so often observed him leering at her; he merely was staring at Sansa, his dark eyes trained on her as though studying her, and she felt naked. She wondered, absurdly, if he could see the smears of coal that Gendry so often left upon her pale skin. 

The dark-haired man beside Tormund let out a sharp bark of a caustic laugh.

“Oh _has_ she—”

“—We’ll speak in there,” said Tormund suddenly, easily dismounting from his horse with swift grace. The wildling man next to him looked outraged, but Tormund ignored him and stalked past him, up the stairs that Sansa could so clearly remember spotting Jon on for the first time in so many years, could so clearly remember how he had looked at her, how all of the little broken shards of glass inside of her had seemed to suddenly come back together, broken shards painted with gold as though Jon had touched each broken piece of her soul and made it lovely again, made it _whole_ again—

Her eyes were burning again.

She would not think of him.

She resisted the urge to look back at Davos and Brienne for reassurance, at Gendry for something like goodbye… She was Queen in the North and she had to be a woman sure of herself. She had to be a woman that the free folk could respect.

How had Jon done it? His spirit inhabited hers, briefly, as she lifted her jaw, and walked with purposeful grace after Tormund, pretending she did not feel the gazes of them all like a flame too close to her back. _He always did what needed to be done,_ she told herself, and so she followed Tormund’s impossibly tall, broad form. 

 _He’s a practical man who’s led armies,_ Ser Davos had said. _He’ll want more._

She had a flash of him above her. Gendry was a broad man; Tormund was something else. 

She swallowed and followed Tormund into the room.

This was the room that she had sat in with Jon that fateful night that she had come to Castle Black, desperate for refuge. She hadn’t known what to expect but she hadn’t been prepared for his touch, for his kindness, for the way he had looked at her. They’d sat before the fire, a bowl of watery, thin soup between her palms as he had gazed at her. She had never known grey eyes could be so warm. He had gazed at her like she was beautiful, like she was made of gold, like she was precious, and after being so unloved for so long it had been like a fire near numb fingers: bringing feeling back was painful but a relief, too. _I’m alive again,_ she had thought. _I’m_ me _again._

But there was no fire in the hearth, and the room was cold, the grey light of day seeping in, bleaching the wood around them, silhouetting Tormund Giantsbane…Jon was not in this room. 

_He's not down here, Sansa..._

But  _where_ was he, if not here? If not in the crypts of Winterfell? 

 _Where_ was Jon?

“Shut the door,” Tormund told her, his voice quiet but brooking no argument. Without looking away she reached behind herself and shut the door.

Now it was just the two of them.

Across the room they regarded each other. They might as well have been strangers. It did not feel as though he had once fought for Winterfell, that he had once loved Jon too. He looked different than she remembered, too. His hair was pulled back tighter, showing the harsh planes of his face. He looked more jagged yet more polished, too. She wondered if he had been preparing for her visit, wondered if he too had strategized about this meeting, down to even what he might wear.

 _He’ll want more,_ Ser Davos had said.

He had once respected Jon, she told herself. She had to be like Jon.

“You know of the skirmishes,” Sansa began pragmatically. She would not insult him by playing coy, by pretending she was anything other than this: a woman trying, desperately, to lead her own people. She walked toward his desk. He was impassive and his dark eyes were heavy on her.

“Aye, I know of them. People will fight,” he conceded dispassionately. Her mouth was dry. Where was the man who had made Jon—sulky, sullen, brooding Jon—light up with laughter? She would have been able to charm _that_ man, she would have been able to be herself around _that_ man. She did not know how to be around _this_ man.

_Just be like Jon._

She paused. This place held too many memories, and she felt like she was drowning. She had looked around to try and draw strength from the memory of that night that Jon had welcomed her but all it did was bring her pain.

 _But I’m_ not _Jon. I’m just me._

“I want peace,” she said, looking away from the vacant, darkened hearth. As empty and ashen as her own heart. “If we don’t have peace, Queen Daenerys will take our last bit of freedom from us. We need to be united.”

They stared at each other again. Tormund Giantsbane knew what she had come for—she could see that much in his eyes. She would not charm him. _This is what needs to be done. This is a deal._ “I came to suggest a marriage,” she said, instead of saying any of the pretty words she had once been taught to say to men. Tormund Giantsbane was not one of the many foolish men that had once decorated King's Landing. He would have laughed at those men, and he would laugh at the words she might have used to entrance, to bespell those men. “To unite our people against Queen Daenerys.”

“You have little love for my people,” Tormund remarked, and suddenly he swung around the desk, and stood before her, imposing, so tall she had to crane her neck to continue to meet his eyes. “Little love,” he continued quietly, “unless you need our bodies for war.”

If they had touched, her chin would graze his chest. Tall though she was, he was taller. Red though her hair was, his was redder. He was more than she could ever be. 

_Just be like Jon. Think only of what needs to be done._

She had been prepared for this. She had known what he might say, what he might feel, because she knew what it was like to be used, to only be seen as a body. 

“You’re right,” she admitted, and he gave no sign of surprise and again she considered how gravely she had misjudged this man. She had thought he would be an open book. “I could love them,” she began, watching his eyes, “because Jon did.”

* * *

_I could love them_ , she said. _Because Jon did_.

_But I cannot love you,_ Tormund thought. _Because Jon did._

His survival had been predicated upon learning to read people and learning to read them well. Enemies were human, after all, except the ones that weren’t, and there was little he could do for _those_ except fight as hard as he could. Men—and women—were softer, more complicated, yet easier, too. He had learned to read Jon, learned when the man was angry, when the man was tired, when he was hungry and when he was guilty. He had learned the way his hands would clench whenever Sansa turned away, had learned how his grey eyes would linger on the soft, pale skin of her neck, just where the soft, downy hairs on the nape of her neck would sometimes curl, had learned how Jon’s lips would part slightly, his pupils widening as he took in that which he wanted and that which he could not allow himself to have. Tormund’s flesh prickled with gooseflesh as he found his own eyes tracing that skin now, just barely visible in the shadow of her cloak. It _was_ pretty skin. Kissable skin. Tormund could not blame Jon for that. He had been able to read Jon’s tumultuous, fiery thoughts as he had gazed upon the woman he thought his half-sister. He had once been able to read anyone. 

But he could not read Sansa in this moment. She was opaque as a frozen lake to him; her depths were dark, unknowable, unreachable. No one, he suspected, knew the secrets of her heart.

"I have two daughters," Tormund confessed at last. Sansa shrugged and looked away, her long red braid falling over her slender shoulder, and Tormund thought yet again of how Jon's grey eyes had always reflexively followed such movements with hunger, thinking that no one had seen. Tormund had  _always_ seen. But then, perhaps it was because he too had always been looking at Sansa. 

She was a beautiful woman. That was all. 

"I just want to keep my home safe. And I want to be buried in Winterfell, next to...my family." She smiled at him then, a sad smile. _Jon, Jon, Jon,_ the wind seemed to howl around Castle Black. "I think you'd honor that. I think your daughters would honor that."

"And if we have a child?" 

He watched her features carefully. He _knew_ how to read people. He  _did._

She gave a short wave of her hand. It was a dismissive motion; but in it he saw that her palms were newly chapped. 

"They would be heir to Winterfell."

He did not yet know how to read her. 

Tormund watched the light dance in her blue eyes. "We need to be united against Daenerys Targaryen, or else she will come for the north," said Sansa calmly. Tormund heard the ice as she spoke the name of the queen. Perhaps he would learn to read her after all—or, perhaps, he had imagined it, had assumed it. ”I know _you'll_ never kneel to her."

They regarded each other, and he saw her swallow. "And I won't either. We need a union that will make sense to her; we need a union that will make sense to the northerners. I know your people do not respect political marriages, but if we make it seem as though you are courting me--"

Tormund laughed.

"Courting you?" Sansa stared at him mutely, brows arched. "The free folk don't court, _Sansa_. A man steals a woman and makes her his."

"Then steal me." She sounded weary. "It doesn't matter to me."

“I will not.” 

She didn’t react immediately, and he could not help but award her a bit of grudging respect. Her cool gaze took him in. 

“Do you not love your people either, then?” she asked calmly, and it rankled. 

“We’re not like you southerners,” he said, just as calmly, and he studied those lovely blue eyes but they gave nothing away. “We don’t solve problems with false marriages.” 

“And how else do you plan to _solve_ the problem of the Dragon Queen?” 

He had no answer. 

He watched her swallow again, watched the muscles of her lovely throat—he had always understood why Jon might want to stare at such a throat—work as she did so. She looked away again. 

“Then we are done here,” she said, turning away from him. 

* * *

She would never, for as long as she lived—however long or not long that might be—forget the way the collective gaze upon her and Tormund as they left that room blistered her skin.

Her defeat had been public, for of course, why _else_ would she request a private audience with Tormund Giantsbane? Had she been victorious, they would have come out together, perhaps hand-in-hand—but she went out first, holding her chin up. This had been an attempted brokerage. She would not be bent or broken by Tormund Giantsbane’s rejection. _Just be like Jon._ So although she felt foolish with her hair braided like the women of the free folk, although she felt foolish with the sword at her hip, though she felt foolish for _all_ of it—Gendry’s burning blue gaze was decidedly not helping—she descended the steps, remembering the slow, shocked way Jon had done the same not so long ago, that fateful day she had come to him at Castle Black.

 _He'll help you,_ Theon had told her. 

Theon was gone now, too. 

They were all gone. 

It was just her, now. 

_You were supposed to come back. You promised._

The scarred wildling man whom had accompanied Tormund Giantsbane earlier was smirking at her now. Sansa met his eyes directly, hoping her gaze was as chilling as Jon’s had once been—he had been able to freeze people with a single look even as a child—and then looked back to her own council.

“A productive meeting,” she informed Davos and Brienne, loud enough for the free folk to hear. “But we must return now, before it grows dark.”

She attempted to swing onto her horse without aid, though she never did this normally. She felt them all watching as she tried, failed, tried, failed, tried again to swing into the saddled horse. Face flushed, snow melting on her hot skin, she turned the horse away from the free folk.

Tormund Giantsbane made a lame attempt—for him, at least—to flirt with Brienne, but she turned from him, and Sansa loved the woman more fiercely than ever in that moment for her solid loyalty.

“Goodbye, Tormund Giantsbane,” she said, as the gates to Castle Black opened.

Everyone was listening.

This was her chance.

Tormund regarded her.

“Goodbye, Queen in the North,” he said, his voice lilting with irony.

She offered him a frozen smile.

“I hope you continue to enjoy my half-brother’s gift,” she said finally, gesturing to Castle Black.

And without another word, she left.


	3. Games

  _Now children come, and they will hear me roar_

* * *

 

All the way back to Winterfell, Sansa silently fought her way through her shame, but it was like vines creeping up around her: every time she thought she had cut herself free, she found herself floundering and mired again.

She was supposed to be good at this—it was all the merit she had to herself, really. When she had first reunited with Jon she had begun to think she had found herself, had found her worth. _I might not wield a sword, or marry a king, but I know how the world works and I've learned from my enemies_ , she would tell herself, and it had soothed her nearly as much as Jon's soft smile had. After so many years of thinking herself worthless, useless, foolish, she had begun to believe in herself again.

To think that she had been wrong, that her self-belief had in fact been misplaced—that the cruel words of the people she had once admired were actually correct—was the greatest pain of all.

And so they rode in silence, and she was both grateful for and ashamed of the apparent ability of her council to read her and see her need for silence. _Or perhaps_ , a darker voice within her whispered, _they do not feel it is worth the bother of strategizing or course-correcting now. Perhaps they think you are too foolish, too stupid. Perhaps they are all thinking of how they might find a better person to rule. Perhaps they are wishing Queen Daenerys had taken the North anyway._

When they reached Winterfell, hours later, Gilly was waiting on the parapet wall, a grim expression on her plain face and little Sam in her arms, nestled against her breast. She looked troubled.  _How can she already know we have failed?_ Sansa wondered in agony.

Or, perhaps, Gilly had simply guessed it might go this way.

They came in through the hunter's gate, and Gilly rushed down to meet them, shifting little Sam who woke and began to whine. It was dark, now, and the braziers were points of gold in the navy darkness.

"Well?" Gilly asked as they dismounted, boots scraping against beaten-down snow. Sansa's unused sword banged at her hip, and she fought the urge to rip it off her and toss it aside. Her shame squirmed in her throat. She had been humiliated before—so many times—but never by her own hand—at least, not quite like this.

"We were unsuccessful," she said shortly. She forced a smile and was about to ask Gilly for any news, when Gilly wordlessly shoved a small scroll at her.

"A raven came," Gilly said in a low voice, as Davos, Brienne, and Sam crowded closer. Gendry walked away with Podrick to stable the horses; Podrick, she knew, was merely trying to be helpful—but for Gendry it was something else. Sansa put Gendry out of her mind and unfurled the scroll with numb fingers, but Gilly burst out again before she could read, "it's Queen Daenerys, she'll be here in—"

"—A fortnight, yes," Sansa finished, lowering the scroll slightly, her mouth dry. There was tightness in her throat, like she was sick with a cold, a soreness that was claustrophobic.

They looked between each other: Gilly and Sam, Davos and Brienne. Sansa waited for them to seem relieved, or to show some sign of apprehension, but Davos merely snorted.

"Takes her bloody dragons less than a fortnight to get here. I reckon she's being polite, giving us time to clean for her arrival," he mused, in that gruff, sly way of his, and Gilly and Sam laughed, and Brienne's lips twitched grudgingly, as though she did not think this the moment for jokes but still found Davos funny.

And then they were all looking at her, and her throat tightened again and her blood thudded in her ears.

"What will we do?" Brienne asked, and the words were the sweetest that she had heard in a long time.

Perhaps they didn't think her a failure. Perhaps they still had faith in her.

Perhaps she was still allowed to like herself.

Sansa thought of Jon, of how he had looked when his men had turned helpless eyes to him; thought of how he'd looked when he'd been named King in the North, and how he had turned to her immediately, a look of exhilarated relief in his eyes that at the time she had only partly understood. _They still want me,_ he had been thinking—she knew it now. _I have not yet failed_.

Oh, but she had loved him. She had wanted him, would always want—

 _No._ She would not think of him.

"We plan. And we prepare," she said grimly. "Without the help of the free folk."

* * *

"The southerner's here."

It was late. Well dark, now. Tormund had been drinking with Ren and the others and now they were all drunk and sleepy, still occasionally bubbling up with laughter at the absurdity of the Queen in the North's proposal.

 _Court her_ , Ren had bellowed with laughter, and the room had been too hot for the mirth that they all enjoyed. _She wants him to court her!_ A dozen men—and a few women—had made a few crude comments, for the Queen in the North was still beautiful, after all. Infamously beautiful. Distractingly beautiful.

Tormund had laughed with them, but now he was drunk and could not help but think of all the men who would have been laughing—should have been laughing—with them, who had been lost, lost for the very reason that the Queen in the North had darkened his doorstep. He could not help but think of them.

And of one man who would not have been laughing at all. One man who would have killed him for his laughter, killed him for what had been offered to him today.

Part of him, as he had slipped into drunkenness, had been ashamed at his own audacity. He had been laughing at something that Jon Snow had wanted so deeply that Tormund had begun, towards the end, to see signs of madness in him every time he looked at his half-sister. That wild but silent desperation...what would King Crow have given to be offered what Tormund had been offered today—to be offered what Tormund laughed at today?

And another ghost was haunting him: Mance...who had been executed by fire—yet then King Crow swam before his vision too, arrow and bow poised, grey eyes filled with the rage that Tormund had felt...There were too many damn ghosts in this place tonight.

"Southerner?" Ren slurred, lifting his head from the cradle of his arms. It was Agneta, bundled up, her cheeks chapped from the cold. She seemed impatient to see this room of drunken men, and Tormund thought of Jon, of King Crow, yet again. He would never have joined them tonight; he had only gotten more isolated, more reserved, toward the end. He had become so withdrawn...

"Aye, the sad-looking one," she said irritably with a short wave of her hand, and for the briefest flash Tormund saw Jon Snow standing there, his wolf lingering behind him; saw him when he was young, saw him when he was in love with Ygritte. _That's_ _enough_ _ale_ _for_ _tonight,_ he told himself. Too many bloody ghosts. "Greasy hair, sour face..."

"Edd," Tormund realized, and with great effort he pushed himself off the bench and made his laboring way around the table to the door. The room swayed and blurred; he had not allowed himself the luxury of getting drunk in so long...

"That one, aye," Agneta agreed, as they left the warmth and sleepy light, and the brittle cold jarred Tormund. It was all grey and silver in the moonlight, and in the courtyard of Castle Black, Edd Tollett was waiting.

"Leave us. Have some ale," Tormund told Agneta, who was only too happy to run back to the warmth of the hearth, and leave Tormund in the howling silver night with this southerner.

"Don't hurry on my account," groused Edd. "I'm only risking my neck for you. But what does my neck matter?"

"Aye, what does it matter? It's no special neck," Tormund asked with a laugh, and Edd's thin lips twitched reluctantly. "What've you brought me?"

He had never liked working with spies, but he'd learned well their value. He studied Edd as the man glanced round the courtyard, searching for some sign of listeners. He stepped closer; Tormund thought he looked unwell, but then it would have been strange for Edd, so utterly devoted to Jon Snow, to look anything but unwell.

Edd's gaze shifted, then fixed on Tormund.

"Queen Daenerys will be paying Winterfell a visit."

Abruptly, the haze that the ale had provided was gone. Tormund's belly clenched, and he stood taller, staring hard at Edd.

"When?"

"A fortnight." Edd looked away, let out a bitter laugh. "Sansa Stark's a good woman. You're a fool to not accept her. It's Mance and Stannis all over again."

He had said the words that Tormund had been thinking all night, but now Tormund felt a flare of anger.

"You'd liken your Queen to Stannis? And call her a good woman?" he asked archly, and Edd looked back sharply at him.

"No," he said calmly. "I'd liken her to Jon Snow. A good man. And Queen Daenerys is Stannis all over again, and you'll die by fire, unless Sansa Stark can mercy-kill you before the dragon queen gets to you." He shook his head. "But don't listen to me. It's not like I've seen this bloody scenario play out before. Not like I know anything." He paused. "She won't let us call her queen. That should mean something to you.”

"What does Stark plan to do when the dragon bitch arrives?" Tormund asked instead.

"She's no fool; she won't try to fight her. Not now that she doesn't have the support of the free folk. I reckon she'll try to negotiate something, maybe give away some land."

"You're not on her little council?" Tormund asked, pointed out, really. Edd scoffed.

"She offered; I said no. I'll spy for you but not that far. Can't have that on my conscience, too, on top of everything else." Edd turned away, mounted his horse. He made a pathetic, hunched figure in the howling night. "Jon Snow haunts me enough as is. Don't want his ghost angry with me for spying on his--" Edd halted, "--well, half-sister, I suppose. In the end I wasn't sure. Cousins, must be. At any rate... This is probably goodbye."

"You think the dragon bitch'll attack?" Tormund looked up at Edd, whose gaze rested on him almost sadly.

"Aye. I think she'll attack you."

Tormund watched the man leave Castle Black, alone. A light snow was falling, stinging his too-warm cheeks, and it was bracing. He did not like being told what to do, especially not by men like Edd, but then, he had asked him to spy for a reason. He was a smart man, and an honest one, too.

 _Jon_ _Snow_ _haunts_ _me_ _enough_ _as_ _is_.

Tormund turned round to look at Castle Black, filled to the gills with his people. _It's_ _Mance_ _and_ _Stannis_ _all_ _over_ _again._

He saw them before his own eyes again, and suddenly his skin was no longer too-warm.

Was he another proud fool leading the people he loved to their death? He had understood Mance, had felt what Mance had felt, had backed Mance...and yet part of him had too seen the folly of it.

Jon Snow had taken a different path: he had bent the knee to this queen and betrayed another one, all for the survival of his people...and now, he suspected, Sansa Stark would do something of the same. But he was not them; he was not a kneeler and he never would be.

But he had chosen this: he had always been a leader, had always been compelled to be at the front of the pack, rushing into danger. What of Ren, what of Agneta? What of all the people that Mance had died for, that King Crow had died for? How many foolish men would have to rush to their deaths before this was done?

 _You'll_ _die_ _by_ _fire_ _unless_ _Sansa_ _Stark_ _can_ _mercy_ - _kill_ _you_ _before_ _the_ _dragon_ _queen_ _gets_ _to_ _you_.

It was not his life that he cared for particularly; he'd rather not die but if it was necessary then so be it.

But who would come after him? Ren? Agneta? ...One of his daughters? Both of his daughters?

 _You're_ _a_ _fool_ _not_ _to_ _accept_ _her_.

"Aye, then I'm a fool," Tormund murmured, watching his words cloud in the air before him.

* * *

Gendry had not been in the Great Keep for supper; indeed, she could not find him anywhere, until she found him at the forge, though he was not working.

Sansa pushed open the heavy wooden-and-iron door, letting in a sliver of moonlight that turned Gendry's strong, broad back silver. He was seated by the forge, turned away from her, turning a sword over in his hands.

"This was the first one I made," he said when she had let the door swing shut, and they were in near-darkness. He glanced back at her, edged in liquid silver by the thin moonlight that streamed in from a window at the top of the wall. Sansa pulled Jon's cloak tighter round herself and walked closer. Gendry would not meet her eyes.

"For me?" she pressed, coming to sit beside him. She breathed in the scent of his skin. She craved him tonight; craved touch, craved distraction, craved coal smeared on her skin. But there was a wall of ice before him.

"For your appearance," he corrected, and turned the sword over again in his strong, capable hands. "But it's the wrong weight. Too heavy. I've only made swords for warriors before, I suppose."

"Yes, I'm no warrior," she agreed patiently, hiding how his words stung. He had loved a warrior woman; she was not the woman he loved. She knew it well. An angry part of her thought of how he might feel if she pointed out that she had once known a man who had forged a sword too for that warrior woman, small enough for a girl of eight. _I_ _may_ _be_ _no_ _warrior_ _but_ _I_ _can_ _still_ _hurt_ _you,_ she thought bitterly, then felt ashamed for the thought.

He was hurting, and it was because of her. This was no way to treat him. "I'm sorry," she said instead of fighting back. She really was no warrior. She was the Mother, who would rather have peace than war. If that made her less worthy, less lovable, then so be it.

"Don't be. You're doing what you want to do."

"No, I'm doing what I _must_. I'm doing what I have to do."

They sat side by side in silence, and finally Gendry scoffed and set the blade aside.

"No," he insisted, and he looked at her at last, meeting her eyes. "You're doing what you _want_ to do. There's nothing to stop you from walking away from all this. There's nothing forcing you to go off and try and get Tormund Giantsbane to marry you. There's nothing stopping you from just running away from all this like I said we should."

"But--"

"--No. You want this." He let out a sad laugh. "I don't understand you Starks. You all say you want peace, you all say you want to be left alone, you all say you want quiet lives, but when push comes to shove, you all want to rule, want to fight. You all play the game in the end."

"You're right. I do play the game. Because I want peace more."

"And where does it end? When are you done playing the game?" He swallowed, angled towards her, grasped her hand in his suddenly. "Do you really think the dragon queen is going to negotiate with you? Do you forget what she did to King's Landing?"

His grip was painfully tight as he gazed at her. His blue eyes burned her. She fought the urge to recoil.

"I forget nothing." She pulled her hand from his grasp and he let her go, then turned away again, shaking his head.

They sat in silence for a long moment. “If I have not been considerate—“ she began but he scoffed again. 

“You’re always considerate,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Always polite. Always queenly.” 

It wasn’t a compliment. She clenched her jaw to stop herself from saying any of the things she wanted to say. Words were weapons, sometimes more deadly than any sword. This was her comfort and this was her burden too. 

“This is why I need you on the small council,” she reasoned instead. “I need your voice. The north needs your voice. You bring a different point of—“

”—don’t insult me. Don’t treat me like one of your subjects.” 

He got to his feet, still turned from her. “So what will you do? Now that Tormund Giantsbane won’t marry you?” 

She thought of Jon, so worn down and weary. He had been tired of fighting. She hadn’t known what he’d really meant. She was learning, and learning it well. There was a bone-deep weariness inside of her, a weariness of conflict. They were supposed to be done with conflict. The final battle had been fought, lives had been lost—so why did it feel like the war was still raging?

And how many more lives would be lost, before they were done? 

“I don’t know. Not yet.”

Gendry looked back at her in surprise, blue eyes blazing. “Not yet,” she whispered, and got to her feet. 

She felt his gaze on her back like a flame as she left the forge but he didn’t stop her, either.

* * *

 

Winterfell rose up before Dany, its roofs and tower tops lost to mist.

Before the gate she saw a point of dark red and a chill rent through her bones.

It was the ice queen.

* * *

 


	4. Fires

  _The ghosts that we knew made us blackened and blue._

* * *

Tormund had watched time slip away as the day of Queen Daenerys' visit to Winterfell approached. Time, disobliging as ever, only seemed to move ever faster, chasing him to a moment he did not feel equal to facing. He was a brave man but this was a different kind of bravery: lonely and private. He had never liked being alone. 

He'd stopped laughing with the others about Sansa Stark's proposal, and soon they had seemed to realize that it was no longer a laughing matter, and the laughter was quieted. The days melted away like wax, toward the point where his decision would become permanent, toward the point where he would no longer be able to undo what he had done...toward the point where others might suffer for his lonely, private pride. 

_It's Mance and Stannis all over again._

He avoided spending time alone, and each day he pushed himself until he was too exhausted to think. There was food to be hunted, homes to be built. There was no end to the ways to occupy his mind and hands in the day; yet at night, when women accompanied him, although his hands were occupied his mind wandered, wandered to ghosts of the people who had meant everything to him.

He was beginning to see King Crow everywhere. Castle Black, after all, was veined with memories of Jon Snow, and the specter seemed to wait for him in every shadow, just round every corner. Sometimes he saw King Crow staring at him; others, Jon Snow was slipping away from him. The man who had led an army, who had united two peoples, was disgusted with him...but it was the boy who had _loved_ that truly haunted Tormund.

He knew what he had to do.

So _why_ wasn't he doing it?

Why was he _laughing_ at it? Why was he laughing at Sansa Stark—whose intentions were so very noble, whose intentions were so very _Jon Snow_?

He knew what he had to do. 

And, if he could truly be honest with himself, he knew why he wasn't doing it. 

Finally, the night before Queen Daenerys was set to arrive at Winterfell, Tormund went to the Wall. He took the rickety pulley-cart up and then was on top of the Wall he had once climbed, staring off the edge of the world, into the black woods. He had nothing to fear from that land any longer—the battle for the dawn had saved him from that fear—yet he still fought.

It was time to admit something to himself.

Peace between the northerners and the free folk was what Jon had fought for, died for, wanted more than almost anything. There was only one thing that Jon had wanted more than that—secret though that want had been—and Tormund realized that he was about to get everything Jon had ever wanted.

He could not bring himself to take what Jon had so wanted. He could not accept what Jon's clever eyes, kind eyes, solemn eyes, had lingered on with such haunted, hungry desire. He could not take what had been so beloved to the man. He felt like a man taking the spoils of war; he felt like some foul, greedy southern king, raping the woman of the man who had died so that he could live. He felt like a crow picking at the entrails of the freshly dead; a crow picking Jon Snow's heart open. 

He could not take the one thing that Jon Snow had truly wanted for himself. It felt filthy, it felt greedy. It felt wrong, it felt like everything that Tormund had spent his whole life standing against. That he should live when Jon had died, that he should marry Sansa, when it was what Jon had so desperately wanted... Perhaps, he thought with no small discomfort, if Sansa Stark were not so—

He would not finish that thought.

But to _not_ take what Jon had so wanted would be to destroy everything that King Crow had built—it would be to destroy everything that Jon had died for. Could he give up the lives of millions for the love of one woman? Would he be such a proud fool? Once upon a time Jon Snow had sacrificed his own pride for the lives of his people; once upon a time Tormund had watched Mance _die_ for his own pride. 

Sansa had no wish to marry him; that much was clear. Sansa was not sacrificing lives for the sake of her own pride. A soft sweet woman was being more of a man than he was, and he could not bear the shame of it. 

Tormund turned his mind from Lord Crow. Dead men didn't speak, and after all, Jon too had always done what needed to be done. He would have understood.

It seemed Tormund would be stealing a woman after all.

* * *

All morning Sansa had stood on the parapet wall, staring south, waiting for the first flash of dragons' wings in the grey light. The cold did not bother her; she took strength from it, remembering how she had once, on this very wall, felt the brush of Jon's lips against her skin... He had only kissed her forehead but no one had ever touched her quite so intimately at that point; no touch had ever meant so much. Her skin had tingled with rushes as light and fleeting as a lover's touches, and the way he had looked at her when he'd pulled back...

...No, the cold did not bother her at all.

On any other day, she might have cried for the memory, but today she drew strength from the memory, today she let the memory rebuild her. Jon had faced what she would face today, and Jon had trusted her to rule in his stead. Jon was here with her on the parapet; she could almost see him in the corner of her eye, standing an arm's length from her, those solemn sweet eyes searching the skyline for the flash of dragons' wings. 

And so, for a moment—just for today; she _needed_ him today—she let herself think of him. She let herself think of his warmth, of his gentleness, of the way he had believed in her, and the way she had believed in him. In some ways, that was the truest gift he had given her: she had _believed_ again, believed in all of the things that had mattered to her as a child. That part so integral to her—the part that had once believed in heroes and knights; in true bravery and true love—had been given back to her. She had thought it lost forever; she had cast it away when the world had scorned her for it, but Jon had handed it back to her with such loving hands. Jon had loved her for it.

So she breathed in his ghost and let it rebuild her, today. She had had nearly everything stripped from her so many times, but this time her enemy would not take that piece of her that Jon had so lovingly placed back within her. The dragon queen would not destroy what Jon's love had rebuilt.

At least, not without a fight.

And there: in the distance she saw what looked like a trick of the light, and then a shadow, and she let her gloved hands clench on the stone of the parapet before her.

The first dragon emerged from a bank of low cloud, and then the second, after it. Like specters they were blurred and shimmering—and then a plume of fire split the sky. Sansa watched their pointless destruction.

For there could be no heroes without dragons, after all.

Sansa squared her shoulders and smoothed her hair. She would wait for them at the gate. She had come up with her strategy the night after Tormund had rejected her: awake and alone in her bed, thinking dismally of the stories of knights and maidens that she had so loved as a child, it had come to her so suddenly that she had bolted upright in bed, exhilarated and breathless.

And so, alone, she went to the south gate and waited there, in Jon's cloak—Queen Daenerys would recognize it—and her sword at her hip.

She would be the hero, this time.

_Please let this work._

* * *

Dany clung to Drogon as they sank lower, never taking her eyes from the ice queen.

She was alone, but lining the parapet wall behind her were men and women with spears, arrows, and swords, all poised and aiming for her. They looked like the free folk but she did not see any sign of their leader, that great fiery-haired man, among them.

Her council had traveled by horse and they were below, approaching Winterfell and the ice queen at its gate, but Dany did not land just yet. Her heavy cloak was soaked from flying through clouds and she was shaking, but this was as nothing compared to the cold that had pierced her at the sight of Sansa Stark. As Drogon circled lower, Sansa Stark came into clearer view, and with a jolt Dany realized she was looking at Aegon's cloak. She would have known it anywhere, in any life. How many times had she seen its back, as Aegon Targaryen—as Jon Snow—had walked away from her? He had only ever walked away from her, and the ghost that haunted her in the Red Keep always had its back to her.

She had watched him shed it in the final battle, revealing the slender but strong form that she had come to know so well, the slender but strong form that she had come to love so well. And then he had been felled, like any man. But he was only half-dragon, she thought now... Only half-dragon, and the blood that had seeped from his soft, pretty lips had been ordinary red...

 _Aegon_ , the wind around her howled. _Aegon, Aegon, Aegon..._

 _Jon_ , her foolish girl's heart thudded in her chest. _Jon, Jon, Jon..._

Drogon grazed ground, a courtyard's length from Sansa Stark. Tyrion, Jorah, Missandei, and Grey Worm had already dismounted and were cluttered around Sansa Stark, but all eyes were on Dany, and she felt a little thrill of anticipation as she let Drogon settle on the ground...before it was her turn to dismount, after all else had settled. There was nothing more to look at but her, her and her dragons. 

She moved slowly, deliberately. The eyes of hundreds were upon her. She was still a khaleesi, and this was what she lived for. She had not felt powerful, had not felt like herself, in so very long, but for a moment she inhabited herself again, she knew herself again. Sansa Stark watched with a look of polite interest frozen on her lovely face as Dany's boots finally touched the snow. Aegon's cloak whipped and whirled around her tall, slender form. _It does not belong to you,_ Dany seethed, fires of fury blooming beneath her skin, _nor do his bones_. 

_They are mine._

But when she took the North—for Westeros was not Westeros without the North—then she would have his bones back. He was her nephew, her lover, and had he lived he would have been her husband. He would have been hers...but this, today, was not about Aegon. This was about Westeros. This was about  _her._  

She had come this far. She could not stop now. 

All eyes were upon her. The weight of the cloud-sodden furs made her move with slow grace but she would not have hurried regardless, and she liked the gravity they lent to her. 

She had come this far. 

She pushed down the squirming unease as she met Sansa Stark's eyes.  _We should be sisters,_ she thought, with another flare of anger.  _We should be sisters, but we can never be._

_If I look back I am lost._

"Queen Daenerys," Sansa Stark greeted as Dany approached. The cold was like knives through her bones, but she would not shiver. Sansa Stark was breathtaking, even with Aegon's drab cloak around her shoulders and her hair wild and tangled from the howling winds. Even with _that_ look on her face, she was beautiful, and there was that squirming unease again. Aegon had never talked about Sansa Stark, and rumor had it that he had beat any man who had tried. "Welcome to Winterfell."

She curtsied, a proper curtsy that the Dothraki would have howled at. Dany toyed with telling her not to curtsy... but then thought better of it.

"This is hardly a welcome, with so many weapons pointed at my dragons," she said instead, approaching Sansa Stark. She saw Tyrion and Jorah both give her a look, but she ignored them. To her surprise, Sansa Stark smiled.

"I would not have guessed that a few spears would make the mother of dragons nervous," she said. "But your scroll did not give me indication to your purpose for a visit, so I prepared as I saw fit." 

Sansa Stark cast an elegant gloved hand to the free folk waiting in the parapets, their arrows still pointed, poised. She looked back and made a swift  _slash_ downward with her hand and they lowered their arrows and spears. Dany looked back at her children, then back at Sansa Stark. 

"I promised you northern independence—"

"—You promised  _Jon_ northern independence," Sansa cut in. She offered that frozen smile, her lovely blue eyes resting so chillingly on Dany. 

_We should be sisters._

"Can we not discuss the Queen's visit  _inside_?" Tyrion suggested. Sansa never took her eyes from Dany. 

"Yes...but if the dragons get too close, we fire."

* * *

Sansa could not breathe. She turned from the dragon queen, then looked up at the parapets at her bannermen...her bannermen dressed as free folk.

She had always loved stories, songs, plays. She had always loved costumes. 

She could only hope that the dragon queen would buy her lie. 

Inside the walls of Winterfell, the courtyard had been packed with as many northerners as she could convince to play a part in her folly, and she led Daenerys Targaryen and her small council through the crowd that parted like snow shaken off a branch. In silence they walked, side by side, and Sansa still could not breathe. She felt the watchful eyes of the people Jon had trusted her to protect, felt their gaze move from her to Daenerys, then back again. 

All the while, the sky flashed and darkened as the two last dragons circled overhead, and the eyes of hundreds looked skyward with each flash, waiting. They could not breathe either. 

"They have been well-fed," Daenerys said in a low voice, as they approached the door to the Great Keep. "They will not attack first." 

They just needed to get inside the Great Keep, away from the open air, where the illusion could be shattered. And yet, even once inside... Two enormous dragons now waited outside of the walls of Winterfell, circling over the fearful eyes of the people Jon had trusted her to protect. 

"I hope you are right," she said, as the doors parted. 

"My control over my dragons has never been stronger," Daenerys said, and then the doors shut behind them, and they were in darkness.

* * *

They had been riding for hours. Tormund had not slept in days, but he was accustomed to fighting on little sleep and he knew well how to fight through that strange, underwater feeling that sleep deprivation brought. The world around them was muted, all that flat, strange gold that the world got when the snow and the mist were thick but sunlight was somewhere just beyond it. His skin burned with cold and his ears had stopped hearing the crunch of hundreds of horses upon the snow. 

When they'd first set out there had been laughter and song but as they approached Winterfell, something in Tormund began to tighten and his laughter had died. He glimpsed shadows circling over Winterfell and knew that everyone else saw them, and knew them, too. He was leading the people he loved straight into the mouths of the beasts that had screamed and roared and burned above them as they had battled for survival. How strange that they should so silently circle over Winterfell, like nothing but smoke trapped in the mist... 

He fucking hated dragons. 

"Might be too late." Agneta had rode up beside him, her light eyes fixed on the dragons. "S'not like you to change your mind, you know. Not like this." 

"I didn't." 

He could not quite admit that he had merely been too craven to do what had been necessary, before. 

He had never been so craven in his life, as he had been these last two weeks. It had been, perhaps, his lowest point. He would not return to it; he would never be so craven again. He had not known until now why King Crow had always seemed so haunted, but he was beginning to understand. There was little valor in doing these underhanded and tricky things to save your people; yet there was little to be saved with grand, sweeping gestures. This, he saw, was true leadership. To bear the weight, to do what made you sick, to give up your own morals, your own  _rules_ , so that they could live... Jon Snow had been an honest man, a man built of morals, but Lord Crow had done things that Jon Snow could never have borne. 

They passed a copse of pines and heard the papery beat of wings, the  _caw_ of crows. Jon Snow stood beneath the pines, grey eyes watching them as they passed.  _P-please. Sansa..._ Red blood dropped off his chin and into the snow.

Tormund turned from the ghost, and urged his horse on faster. 

* * *

Ensconced in the darkness of the great keep—for no matter how many candles were lit, this room always had its shadows—Sansa turned to face Daenerys. Davos, Brienne, Podrick, Sam, Gilly, and Gendry were waiting. Gilly had dressed like more of a woman of the free folk than ever; it was part of their illusion. Sansa watched Daenerys' striking violet eyes sweep the room, taking it in. Southerners so often found Winterfell lacking for its austerity but she knew that Daenerys had once lived in tents, and Sansa doubted that Daenerys had become so accustomed to the finery of King's Landing...what remained of it, at any rate. 

Behind her, Tyrion and Jorah entered, and then two more behind them, a solemn-faced man who had the grace of a warrior and an elegant, reserved woman with intelligent eyes. 

"It has been some time since I was last at Winterfell," Tyrion said, meeting Sansa's eyes at last. He was heavily bandaged, still, and what she could see of his skin had aged considerably. He was a veritable ruin of his former self, but then, she knew she was too. War had aged her, too, and yet had occupied so much of her life that when she looked in the mirror she was not sure what age she ought to have expected to see reflected back at her. 

"It has been some time since there was cause to invite you," Sansa countered, and she felt the air grow still. This, too, was part of her illusion. To his credit, Tyrion laughed, slightly. 

"Soft heart and a sharp wit..." he mused, shaking his head. "At any rate, we thank you for your hospitality—"

"—She did not invite us," Daenerys cut in suddenly, to the shock of everyone. She fixed her gaze on Sansa. "This is a negotiation and Sansa knows it. She's no fool. So leave us—all of you." She cast her gaze round the room, and for a moment no one moved, and Sansa saw her eyes cloud with fury, saw her work her jaw. "I said,  _leave us now._ " 

None of Sansa's council moved. The plan had been for her to suggest privacy and for them to fight it; she had not expected that Daenerys would be the one to suggest privacy, but thankfully her council still played their part beautifully. Brienne even set her hand on her sword at her belt; Podrick stepped forward, doing the same. She turned back to them and nodded. Brienne and Davos studied her for a moment, then obeyed, and the rest followed. Daenerys' council began to leave as well. They filed past the two women. 

Gendry was the last one, and his gaze lingered on Sansa, before he at last turned and left. 

And now they were alone. Daenerys turned from her and paced about the Great Keep, grazing her hand over the tops of tables, the backs of chairs. A small fire burned in the hearth but its warmth did not reach further than the edge of the hearth, and for a moment Daenerys went to it and stood before it. "I did promise northern independence to Aegon—"

"—His name was Jon." 

Daenerys turned back to face her, slowly. In her white furs she was silhouetted by the fire, her edges turned gold. 

"His name was Aegon. That was the name his father gave to him, and it was to  _Aegon_ that I gave the north." 

 

Sansa waited before she spoke. This was the most important part of her plan, and it was more vital than the pretend free folk lining her parapets, more vital than the open, nearly foolish hostility she had shown earlier. This would be the most important thing she did, and it was on this that she gambled the fate of the north and the fate of the free folk. The fate of the people that Jon had trusted her to protect. 

"The northerners and the free folk are united under me...as you can see. Westeros is broken, your grace." She let her voice break on  _broken_.

Daenerys' features shifted, and for a moment, softened by the firelight, she was beautiful, and briefly Sansa could see how she had risen to power. There was such earnestness, such genuine caring, in those violet eyes. A thrill rippled through Sansa. 

Could this actually work?

"And only  _united_ can we heal Westeros," Daenerys countered, stepping closer, away from the fire, and then she was all cold grey again, and her eyes hardened. "There are not many of you left, and I do not see their leader here. The tall man, with the fiery hair..." 

"Tormund Giantsbane." Sansa's mouth was dry. "He is off with our hunters." She knew how to lie, knew how to do it, knew how to use pretty words... Everything rested on her ability to say what Daenerys Targaryen wanted to hear. "While your visit is important, the survival of our people is more important, and we need food." 

She would not breathe until this beast was gone. She watched Daenerys step closer, then circle her. 

"Westeros— _all_ of it—is my birthright, Sansa Stark. And the north is half of the land; I cannot rule Westeros unless I rule the north _and_ the south. Tyrion tells me you are a smart woman; surely you see this. Surely you see that a land whose  _king_ must hunt with his people is a land that would be easy to defeat. And I have dragons—"

"—You have dragons, yes. I could hardly forget, with them circling overhead, threatening my people. I do not forget that you possess two dragons." 

She had chosen her words carefully and she saw a flicker of grief in Daenerys' face that she smoothed over. "Which is why I will give you the lands of the Neck, and have our bounds be drawn at Moat Cailin." Even this had taken days of negotiation, of back and forth, with her bannermen. She watched Daenerys' lips curve into a sneer. 

"What good does that do me? You have given me nothing." 

And now this was everything. Sansa let her jaw tremble with tears as though she were hasty to stifle them.

"The people who live there would disagree with you. I'm told that home has meaning for you; I was told that you put the needs of your people first, before your own ego."

Sansa could see that she was making headway, so she pressed on, her heart thundering against her ribs. " _I_ know that you are the rightful ruler of Westeros, but the north has lost so much to people who rule from King's Landing. And  _I know_ that you are different, but _they_ don't. My people have suffered, and I have to protect them, and I have to make them  _feel_ protected. Once upon a time, I was in their place, so I know how scared they are. So I let them point their arrows at your dragons, and I know you understand their fear. Their arrows cannot hurt your dragons, you and I both know that, but they don't. It comforts them to feel they are protecting themselves—surely you of all people could understand that." 

* * *

Dany hadn't expected this sudden vulnerability. She watched Sansa Stark's mesmerizing eyes fill with tears, watched her rapidly blink them away and step closer. "I'm counting on your empathy, your grace. You're Jon's blood, so I know there must be some of him within your spirit...that giving nature, that generosity." 

_We should be sisters._

But she could not forget how icy Sansa Stark had been, out there beyond the walls of Winterfell. Had she misread this woman? Tyrion had told her, before they had left King's Landing, to be careful around Sansa Stark, but surely he had never seen Sansa Stark's eyes fill with tears like they did now. 

 _Be careful,_ Tyrion had said, so softly.  _Do not trust Sansa Stark._

Dany swallowed. She wanted,  _so badly_ , to trust Sansa Stark. And yet she also despised her, too. She wished for them to be sisters; she wished for Sansa Stark to be dead. Where did her animosity come from? 

_Aegon never spoke of her...and he would beat the men who tried to._

"His name," Dany said instead, at last, "was Aegon." 

There was only grief in Sansa Stark's eyes. 

"I knew him as Jon, I am sorry," she said miserably, and she stepped closer as though to reach for Dany, and halted abruptly, averting her eyes. "Forgive me, your grace. But I cannot allow you to call him Aegon in front of my people." 

"They are rightfully  _my_ people," Dany corrected, but she couldn't put any fire into it. 

 _Be careful,_ Tyrion had said. 

 _I do not want her as our enemy,_ Tyrion had said. 

He had been right about so many things—but, then, he had been  _wrong_ about so many things, too. And with Sansa Stark standing before her, those lovely blue eyes filled with tears, biting her lip so sadly, Dany did not know who to trust: Sansa, Tyrion, or herself? 

She was so, so tired. But if she gave up on this...what else did she have? And yet Sansa had implied something; implied that the northerners were not ready  _yet._ She was dangling something before Dany... 

"They are," Sansa said quietly. "But they do not know it yet. Give them time to heal, and then they'll come willingly. Show them how you rebuild the rest of Westeros." 

The fight bled from Dany. "Rebuilding a kingdom is slow work, your grace. Show them who you really are." 

Sansa could not have known what she echoed, but for the most painful, blinding moment, Dany was thrown back in time to a moment in a tiny room, with Aegon prone before her, smooth yet scarred skin on display... he had said words just like that, and then he had taken her hand... She could still feel his touch ghosting over her skin, and suddenly she could not breathe.  _Aegon, Aegon, Aegon_ the wind outside of the walls of Winterfell howled.  _Jon, Jon, Jon_ beat her broken heart. 

It would be slow work, but perhaps she would plant some trees after all. 

"I'll take the Neck," she said at last. "I'll let you rule your people, and the free folk." 

* * *

Sansa felt weak. She could not believe the ruse had worked. She felt as though she had been ill for a long time, shut in the dark, and now was forced to stand again. Weak but hopeful, she smiled at Daenerys, her lips almost painfully dry. She knew it was most polite to offer Daenerys wine, to have a long talk, to show her the grounds—even to show her Jon's crypt—but she could not bring herself to speak, to make the offer. She felt like weeping and dancing. She felt like kissing Gendry full on the mouth. She felt, mainly, like sitting before Jon's crypt and closing her eyes and thinking of him with abandon. 

But she could not do that yet. 

"I wish to leave," Daenerys said quite suddenly, turning away from Sansa, and Sansa thought she saw her face fall in grief. "I thank you for this, and for the Neck. But it is a long journey, and I fear for my children—my dragons—in this cold." 

"Of course," Sansa said, with restraint—she could not show her relief. "It is no easy journey." 

She led Daenerys to the door and pushed it open, letting in the blinding white light of day. It was painful after the darkness of the Great Keep. The courtyard was still filled with the northerners dressed as free folk, but no one had yet noticed the doors had opened. Children played and people talked, laughed, desperately praying that this would work and the two dragons would no longer circle the sky over their heads.

Sansa opened her mouth. This might, she thought, be the prime moment to emphasize to Daenerys how these were people too, humans, too, and not just subjects to be ruled. She thought she saw Daenerys' striking eyes soften at the sight of the children playing. Before them, a little girl and little boy ran past, laughing, and Sansa turned to Daenerys with a soft smile and misty eyes, prepared to draw out the moment. 

But then—the shadow of a dragon blocked out the sun, casting the courtyard in cold darkness, and it happened. 

"You're such a  _Mormont,_ Robert," the little girl shrieked with laughter as the boy caught her. 

"No I'm not," said the little boy. "I'm a  _wildling,_ remember?" 

_No._

Their mother panicked, scolded at the little boy, in an overwrought free folk accent, but it was too late, too lame.

The ruse was up. 

She froze, then forced herself to look at Daenerys, but the mad queen was staring at her already. 

"A Mormont," she said. "That is no  _wildling_ name, Sansa Stark." 

"I-it must be some silly game," Sansa said swiftly, and she turned to the little boy, but Daenerys pushed her aside and marched to the mother before them, who stood quavering in the shadow of the dragons circling overhead, her terrified gaze flicking upward, briefly, then back to Daenerys. 

"On your son's life," Daenerys began softly, "are you a Mormont?" 

Others had fallen still, began watching, and beyond them Sansa saw Brienne, Davos, and the others, speaking with Daenerys' council—though they too now fell silent, watching this unfold in paralyzed horror, for what could be done? 

"I-I-" 

"You have  _lied._ " Daenerys turned back to Sansa, her violet eyes flashing, and—strangely—wet, as though she were in tears. "You have not united with the free folk. Their leader is not here because they do not follow you— _not_ because he is out on a  _hunting trip_ ," she said with fiery disdain. 

"You've misunderstood, and terrified one of my—"

"No; you have  _lied._ The only thing I have misunderstood is your trustworthiness. You have  _lied_ —" 

A dragon swept lower, too low, and there were shrieks as her people—the people Jon had trusted her to protect—dove out of the way, throwing themselves far from the dragons, who seemed to sense the rage of their mother, seemed to be drawn to it, as Daenerys advanced on her. Distantly Sansa heard the  _shing_ of swords unsheathed; saw movement in the corner of her eye, though she never took her eyes from Daenerys. She heard the sounds of horses, saw a blur in the background, but she did not look away from Daenerys, the mad queen. 

"I did  _not_ lie—"

"—Get the _hell_ away from my queen." 

Daenerys halted, and Sansa finally looked away from her, to the owner of that deep voice.

Behind her, Tormund Giantsbane on horseback had entered the courtyard through the hunter's gate, three dozen free folk trailing behind him, still making their way inside the gate with a very bemused Podrick showing them in.

Tormund's eyes blazed with fury; he was a vengeful god. 

Sansa had never been so grateful, nor had she ever been so angry.

 


	5. Faces

_And I will hold on with all of my might, just promise me that we'll be alright._

* * *

 "Do you have _any_ idea of who I—"

"—Aye, I know who you are," Tormund interrupted, with a dismissive nod. "Those fucking dragons gave it away." Behind him, the scarred man who had sneered at Sansa a fortnight earlier began to laugh at Daenerys' expression. The laughter was infectious, and suddenly all of the free folk were laughing, and even some of Sansa's bannermen, and although Tormund was also laughing, he shot Sansa a meaningful look ...She knew what he intended, and even though she was furious with him, she could still see the merit of it.

It seemed she was still seeing new sides of Tormund Giantsbane. She had not expected him to be so crafty, so underhanded, so strategic. _But of course, he's led armies,_ she reminded herself.

_Jon had been crafty, too._

"Stop that at once," Sansa ordered, stepping forward to stand beside Daenerys, and the laughter abruptly halted. Tormund's nod was nearly imperceptible; she had read his intent correctly. "You will not laugh at Queen Daenerys. She is our guest."

"Our _uninvited_ guest," Tormund pointed out, and he swung off his horse with easy grace. "Don't expect me to kneel, Mother of Dragons. It's not our way."

Daenerys was, for once, shocked into silence. Tormund approached them, snow on his shoulders and in his wild hair, with slow, thoughtful steps, his gaze heavy and unflinching on Daenerys. "It has been some time, Mother of Dragons."

Daenerys' face was oddly flushed as her anger toward Sansa receded, to be eclipsed by confusion and humiliation; Sansa could see she was becoming embarrassed, feeling silly in the face of their laughter. She knew the feeling, and her heart almost broke for Daenerys. She knew how off-putting the free folk could be; how frivolous they could make one feel. Tormund towered over them both and stared down at Daenerys with an unimpressed, expectant arch of his brows.

"I have been occupied with ruling from King's Landing," Daenerys said almost defensively, and Tormund scoffed.

"And yet you found time to _grace_ us with your presence," he said loudly, looking around the courtyard at his audience. He had never looked so much like a warrior, particularly compared to Daenerys in her fine white furs. Every step he took, there was the soft clang of iron: his weapons, his armor.

"I came to negotiate. Sansa Stark says you—"

"—Queen Sansa," a pale-eyed woman behind Tormund said loudly. "She is Queen in the North." Her hand went to the sword at her belt and Sansa's skin prickled as she glanced at Tormund. He had some explanations to give. She had never heard anyone of the free folk so willingly call someone 'queen.'

"Please," Sansa insisted. "Let us not quibble over titles. I've given Queen Daenerys the Neck _as we discussed_. She wishes to leave, and it grows late. We do not want to hold her back from returning to King's Landing."

"Aye, she's got a lot of work to do still, from what I hear," Tormund said, earning another round of uproarious laughter that made Daenerys' face burn dangerously.

"Forget them; they have a savage sense of humor, your grace," said Sansa in a low voice, and she guided Daenerys back toward her council, away from Tormund and his free folk.

"I suppose I owe you an apology," Daenerys hedged in a low voice, as they walked. "Though you do not seem particularly united with Tormund Giantsbane..."

"No, we are still learning to understand each other," conceded Sansa. "I must admit, I rely on Jon's legacy. Perhaps one day when there is more time, you can advise me."

She did not miss the gleam of pride in Daenerys' violet eyes. She knew Daenerys, she had known so many of her kind in her life, and for a second she saw Cersei, Joffrey, Lysa, even Margaery, and she fought the urge to flinch from her.

"Yes, perhaps," Daenerys said.

* * *

When the dragons had disappeared into the clouds, it was at last time to confront what had happened.

Where Sansa had felt weak before, she now trembled with something like anger. The free folk and Sansa's bannermen had watched the dragons go, and now the courtyard began to rumble with noise as they began to talk amongst themselves, a wide chasm between the bannermen and the free folk.

Sansa turned to Tormund. In her peripheral vision she saw Brienne and the others advancing on them. Tormund was no longer smirking.  _Good,_ she thought viciously.  _You don't deserve to smirk like you won something._

"You have some nerve," Sansa began in a low, shaking voice. "I had that under control—"

"—Oh, _did_ you? Looked like a bloody disaster to me," he shot back, just as quiet. She didn't know he had a volume lower than "booming." His dark eyes fixed on her, roving over her face, searching her like he was reading her, and again she felt oddly naked, and heat rose to her cheeks—in spite of the frosty air and the snowflakes dotting her skin periodically. "Didn't take you for a gambler like your cousin," he remarked, and it was like he had taken her heart in his hand and squeezed, painfully.

It was so rarely acknowledged that she and Jon had not been, after all, siblings.

Most people forgot that implication of his true parentage. 

Most people. 

Not her. 

That part had not escaped her. 

And there had been a tone in his voice...Or had she imagined it?

"Jon wasn't—"

"— _Jon_ wasn't. Lord Crow _was_ ," Tormund shot back, stepping closer and grabbing her arm quite suddenly. "And he _died_ for it—"

"—Giantsbane," came Ser Davos' voice, and Tormund dropped her arm as suddenly as he'd taken it, and stepped back. Ser Davos was smiling but it did not reach his eyes, and Brienne was looking mutinously at Tormund. Their loyalty touched her, strengthened her, made her eyes burn with gratitude. She could do this. 

"We need to speak in private," Sansa said to the group at large. She caught Gendry's eyes, and his jaw was set.

"I don't hear any thank-you's. Odd," said the scarred-faced man who had laughed. Tormund, to Sansa's surprise, shot him a look and he was silenced at once, clamping his mouth shut and stepping back almost fearfully.

"Aye, let's speak in private," Tormund agreed heavily, meeting Sansa's eyes once again. Sansa turned from him, her skin still tingling where he had touched her, and began walking back toward the Great Keep. She heard the crunch of stone beneath boots; Tormund was following her. The eyes of her bannermen were upon her, but she did not acknowledge their gazes. She had just put them through terror, and now, she knew, the sudden presence of the leader of the free folk was simply further insult. Their love and loyalty had been so hard-won and was as changing as the tides; she did not know whether she would still be their queen after today—particularly after the dragon had swept so close to them.

She put it out of her mind, and pushed open the enormous, heavy doors of the Great Keep. 

And once again she became swallowed in the darkness of the Great Keep. It was nearly evening, now, and the candles made small pools of gold in the darkness. The heavy door shut behind Tormund, and Sansa turned to face him.

He was so much taller and broader than she was used to seeing in a man. She was tall so it was rare for her to feel dwarfed by a man but she felt like a doll compared to him, and felt young, too, and that too was an alien feeling—for most of the time she felt _so_ old, old as stone. He made her feel foolish, childish, girlish. 

Across the room, they regarded each other. Adversaries and yet, now, allies, too, she supposed. So why did it still feel like she was fighting something? 

"You thought you'd play a trick on the mother of dragons?" he finally asked, staring her down. Her face flushed and she resisted the urge to look away. She held his gaze, held her chin up. 

"It was my only option left."

"It was clever," he conceded, to her surprise, and he stepped closer and took off his sword belt and laid it on the table, where it made a heavy clank against the wood, and something in the pit of her belly tightened. "But I did hear you were clever."

"Yes, clever enough to realize you must have a spy at Winterfell," she said, straining to keep her voice level. Tormund scoffed. "It must be Edd Tollett; he was gone for hours the day after I visited Castle Black," she continued, her mouth dry. She had put it together in one burning instant, back out in the courtyard, and had wanted to slap Edd. 

"A clever lass," Tormund laughed. "Clever as Lord Crow."

"What are you doing here?" she pressed, and the laughter died from Tormund's face. He walked closer to her, and she fought the urge to step back. Even an arm's length from her he seemed to invade her space; she was all too aware of him and it was shameful.

"Accepting you," he said. "You're right: it's the only way, whether we like it or not."

Sansa let out a shaking breath in the silence of the Great Keep. Her blood pounded in her ears as she stared at Tormund, and she gripped the edge of the table beside her for stability. She had not been prepared for this, too, today. Everything had been dedicated to keeping her bannermen safe from the Mother of Dragons; she did not feel equal to _this_ , too. Tormund set his large, scarred hand on the table beside hers. He was too close; she felt so small beside him and she did not want to feel small, she wanted to feel powerful, like a great tidal wave; she wanted to feel like lightning, able to raze the earth. She wanted to be stronger, greater, and more than any man—especially this man, this man she would be marrying. She did not want to feel like a toy, a doll, a pawn, to a husband _ever_ again.. "I have some conditions," he said, still gazing at her. She had to remind herself to breathe.

" _You_ have _conditions_ ," she repeated in disbelief. "What could they _possibly_ be?"

"You'll stop fucking the bastard," he began, and for a wild moment, Jon flashed before her eyes and her whole body shivered; she had never allowed herself to picture it, though _gods_ she had wanted to, had had to stop herself from thinking of it so many times when he had still been alive, had had to stop her hands from wandering in the night every time he had accidentally touched her, for he had never  _intentionally_ touched— "—Gendry," he added, only just remembering his name.

"I'm not—"

"—You are, and you'll stop it. We don't have to fuck, but I won't be made a fool before my own people," Tormund said dispassionately. Sansa worked her jaw.

"Did your spy tell you this?"

"No, it's written all over the lad's face," Tormund scoffed. "And if I can see it from just a glance, others will too. I won't have it."

"Then you won't—won't lay with anyone," Sansa countered, her neck hot. The Great Keep suddenly was stifling. She wanted to shed her furs and clothes and lay naked in the snow. 

"Aye, I won't fuck anyone," Tormund agreed. _Why_ did he have to use such language? It made her heart shudder, made her mind conjure the strangest, most disturbing images— "We'll live here, and—"

"—Since when are _you_ the one making demands? _I_ was the one to suggest the arrangement," Sansa interrupted, feeling increasingly frivolous by the second. Tormund arched a brow at her.

"Did you have a different plan, my _queen_?"

"...No."

Tormund looked away at last, and Sansa stopped herself from folding her arms across her chest. "What made you change your mind?"

"...My only option left," Tormund said wryly, and he laughed. "How long d'you think the Neck will keep the dragon bitch happy?"

"Not long," Sansa admitted, "but it's the only land I could negotiate with my bannermen to give away. I've bought us some time but once the season changes and travel is easier, we'll have new problems."

"Aye but it's enough time to train an army," Tormund reasoned. "How many standing d'you have?" He was looking at her again, those warm dark eyes on her, and it was a shameful relief to her that they were no longer so cold, so hard, so unyielding.

He was still too close, though.

But if she stepped back, she sensed she would be yielding something, revealing something...she stood her ground. 

"Less than ten thousand, for at least another year." She looked to him. "You?"

Tormund grimaced.

"Five thousand, at most," he admitted.

They were silent for a moment. If she reached out, she would be able to touch his chest, and she chastised herself for such a strange thought. It was merely that he was such a large, physical man, she told herself. She was not used to men who were so ...masculine. She was nearly as tall as Gendry, though he was a tall man, and there was a boyishness to him even though the war had aged him like everyone else.

There was nothing boyish about Tormund Giantsbane.

"You'll do anything for your people, just like Jon Snow. I can respect it," he said suddenly. "If I have to kneel to a queen, I'll do no better."

"I don't want anyone to kneel," Sansa countered, looking down. "I don't care what you call me; I just—"

"—Aye, Tollett told me you don't like to be called queen," Tormund said. Sansa risked a look back up at him and he was half-smiling down at her. "I should call you Queen Crow," he said wryly, but there was grief hidden behind the humor.

"Do you think your people will respect the marriage?"

Tormund was quiet for a moment as he considered. He let out a sigh and his warm breath fanned over the exposed skin of her neck. Her fingers twitched with the urge to touch her throat but she stilled her hand by clenching her fist.

"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not."

"What if we were open—what if we were honest?" Sansa asked suddenly. "What if we told them our intent? What if we didn't try to play them false?"

Tormund looked at her critically, studying her. Sansa licked her lips and his eyes followed the movement, so briefly. "What if we told them that we were simply marrying as a last effort to unite our people? My bannermen know I would do anything for them, and your people would follow you to the end of the earth. It might—"

"—Make them respect each other more," Tormund finished for her. Sansa nodded, her heart pounding.

"They know it's not borne of ambition, and _certainly_ not borne of romance," she continued quickly, and Tormund laughed, and she found her own lips twitching with the urge to laugh though she stifled it. "Perhaps it's honesty that we need now. Your people will never respect the game of thrones, and my people are tired. Maybe if we're completely honest..."

Tormund studied her.

"A clever crow," he said slowly. "And a gambler, too." He picked up his sword again. "Just like your cousin. You learned from him."

There was a lump in her throat.

"I-I did," she admitted. "But I have my own tricks, too."

Tormund's gaze flicked over her whole form and her skin prickled again as though he'd touched her.

"I noticed," he admitted with a laugh. "And I have mine, too."

"I noticed," she parried, and then they were laughing, suddenly, and then they were not. The candles were dying and it was too dark, and she had another flash of him— _no, stop that,_ she told herself. He was looking at her shrewdly and she felt, yet again, naked. _Stop it stop it stop it_.

His eyes darkened.  _Stop it._ Why was she thinking such thoughts at a moment like this? Tormund tilted his head to the side. He was no boy; he knew how to read a woman's thoughts. 

What if... 

Her heart was pounding against her breastbone. In the low light, it would have been so easy... If she took one step closer, she would graze against him, and then he might take her on the table—

"We'll set up camp outside the walls," Tormund said. "Let's sleep on it. You've bought us some time; we'll come together tomorrow and decide what we want to say." 

She felt absurd. What had come over her? Perhaps it was the exhaustion, perhaps it was the pure fire coursing through her veins, the fires of relief that the Mother of Dragons was gone, had bought her lie—though only just barely. Perhaps it was exhilaration; perhaps it was grief. 

"Alright," she conceded softly. 

His gaze lingered on her neck, so briefly—or had she imagined it? And then he was turning from her, leaving her standing by the table, trembling all over and too warm. 

* * *

They pitched their camp just beyond the walls. Tormund had known better than to try and stay within the walls of Winterfell tonight; he had not missed how Sansa's bannermen had looked at his people. 

He lay in his own tent. For the first time, Agneta had fucked him tonight. This might be the last time he fucked a woman, he reflected, staring up at the crease in the skins. The tent was humid with the smell of sex. He had never planned on fucking Agneta but for whatever reason he'd been desperate to fuck today, after leaving his private meeting with Sansa Stark. 

"She is strong," Agneta said drowsily, beside him. "And smart. I like her." 

"Good. She'll be your queen, soon," he shot back. He felt her laugh.  

"Will you fuck her like you fucked me tonight?" 

She was tracing light fingertips along the scars of his chest. Tormund would not look at her. 

"...No." 

"I think she's fucking one of them," Agneta confided. "The one with the—"

"—Blue eyes, aye," Tormund finished for her. He felt her laugh again. 

"He's beautiful. I'd fuck him, too," Agneta mused. "And maybe I will. Looks good with his hands." 

"Aye, but I'm good with my cock," Tormund countered and she laughed, rolling on top of him. She was a shadow above him, her fine blonde hair mussed and wild from what they had done. Tormund wondered if Sansa Stark was fucking Gendry tonight. 

"And good with your tongue, too," Agneta said, straddling him, her wet cunt against his stomach, her hands splayed on his chest. Tormund gripped her thighs and forgot about Sansa Stark. 

Or, at least, he did his best. 

* * *

"You're going to fuck Giantsbane now?" 

Gendry's breath was hot on her neck before he grazed his teeth against the soft flesh; he thrust upward and the stone wall scraped the tender skin of her back as she let out a soft gasp and dug her fingers into the hard muscle of his shoulders. 

"N-no," she gasped as he thrust again. 

They hadn't made it to her chambers. She'd left her rooms, intent on seeking him out, speaking with him, and had met in the liquid silver moonlight of the hall outside of her rooms. His burning blue eyes had been set aglow by the moonlight streaming in through the narrow windows, and wordlessly he had taken her, shoved her against the wall, ripped off her nightdress in movements unsentimental yet searingly desperate. It had been cold, at first, in the hall, but it wasn't cold anymore.

She had been desperate, desperate to not think of Tormund, desperate to not think of what he had implied, what his sly words had suggested...desperate to not think of Jon laying with her... _fucking_ her. "It's," she gasped, twining her fingers in his thick, short hair, "a—a brokerage." 

He scoffed into her neck and bit her flesh again. 

"He wants you," he gasped, voice low and ragged. "It's written all over his face." 


	6. Trees

 

Dany had flown over the Neck, looking down at the middling brown-grey sodden land beneath her, dotted with snow and burned-out cottages. A heaviness had settled on her like wet sand, from which she could not extricate herself, and even flying away from that dismal land that she now possessed did not help matters. Having conquered or won something had always enlivened her but there was a sense of anticlimax: she had neither won nor lost. She had no sense of accomplishment, but no sense of failure, either—only a lingering sense of heavy doubt and disappointment that turned her limbs to lead and yet, at the same time, made her mind race with all sorts of dark thoughts. She was at once exhausted and desperate to run, but upon returning to King's Landing she had no desire to do or think of anything—yet the idea of hiding in her room with nothing to occupy her mind seemed unbearable.

Could one's mind turn _bad_? Staring out at the grey remains of King's Landing, she felt as though something within her had turned. Something had died. She kept thinking of razed soil, where nothing would ever grow again: barren as her womb, and just as hostile.

Where was there to go from here?

She ached for something that would wash her clean, something that would bring her back to who she'd been before. She kept seeking, kept hunting, but always with a listless restlessness, as though she knew it was a pointless endeavor, yet she could not sit still, either. She would even have welcomed Aegon's ghost that had so taunted her; at least that sign of insanity was a sign of something alive within her.

"We made a good start," Tyrion kept saying, but then he finally stopped saying it at the look on her face.

So she'd won the Neck. What now?

The hours slipped away and she watched them roll away like forgotten toys, knowing they were wasted.

She had never felt less like a dragon—and perhaps that was precisely the problem. And so she lit a torch and went down to the cellars of the Red Keep, where the dragon bones were, and stood among the ruins of the Targaryen dynasty.

What had it all been for? She stood before the very largest skull, watching the torchlight make the shadows dance, and thought of Aegon's shadow, slipping away from her, whispering from between dragon teeth and melding with the shadows of the sockets of the dragons' eyes.

Maybe she should have never left the House of the Undying. She should have simply dissolved away with the vision of Drogo and Rhaego, melted into nonbeing, forgotten but happy, no longer alive but not dead inside like she felt now.

In Aegon she had thought things would bloom again, had seen a future, a real one, a future that would grow and broaden and turn wild with flowers, but that too had died. Everything she touched seemed to wither and die, whether she willed it or not.

She needed to do something.

She needed to find who she was once more.

* * *

Sansa awoke early, before dawn. She wondered why she'd awoken so suddenly until she realized that Gendry was awake, sitting upright, his strong bare back to her. His hair was wild, sticking up this way and that, and she realized with a jolt that this would be the final time she would wake up beside him, and a lump began to form in her throat. She was afraid to reach out and touch him, though she longed to desperately, senselessly. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, blue eyes scalding her.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps affection had become part of the deal after all.

They studied each other with weary, wary eyes. Some things could not be undone, and they had behaved, in so many ways, with such restraint, never showing too much of themselves to one another. Several times they each drew in a breath as though to speak, then let it out, relinquishing the thought.

"We could still run," Gendry said at last. "You gave Queen Daenerys the Neck. It'll hold her long enough while the rest of them come up with a plan."

Sansa settled back into the pillows.

"You know I can't."

"Aye, I don't know why I bothered to say it," Gendry said softly. He looked away from her, looked ahead once more, staring at the opposite wall where the hearth was.

His back had become so familiar to her. It was making her crazy that this would be the last time she would wake up to see his bare skin, to feel his heat—he was always so warm—trapped beneath the furs, setting her own skin aglow.

He would know, of course, that this would be their last time. Their last morning. But she had to say it. There could be no misunderstandings; she could not unwittingly ruin the sacrifice that she and Tormund were about to make.

"Tormund and I agreed that we wouldn't..." She searched for her words. "...We agreed that we wouldn't consummate the marriage. But that we'd also not...lay with anyone else."

She expected a sarcastic remark but instead Gendry merely lay back down, and she breathed in his scent as it rushed around her like an embrace, and then he was turning toward her, mouth covering hers, and he kissed her so tenderly that it made her want to cry. He had never touched her like this, and it made her think of Jon, and how things might have been, and her heart ached with want for all of the things she had never had; all of the things she would never have. The lump grew bigger in her throat and then hot tears were slipping down her cheeks as he kissed her more deeply, settled on top of her, the skin she knew so well smoothing against hers. "S-sorry," she whispered between kisses.

"If it makes you cry," he breathed, "why are you doing it?" His hand was on her jaw; he was so close but she could only turn her face away, and look out the windows, at the blue darkness before the dawn.

She was about to say, _because I have to_ , but she knew that wasn't quite the truth. She didn't know why she was doing it, really. Love for Jon? Guilt for all of the things she had done wrong, all of the things she should have been? Grief for all that she had lost, and shame that she was still standing? Was this her atonement for her foolishness, for her survival? Was this her payment for watching her father's head come off?

"I'm crying because I wish we could have had this all along," she confessed instead, and he froze.

"You never—" he halted, then rolled off of her, suddenly. Cold air rushed over her naked, bruised form, and his back was to her once more, but there was a new poison in the air.

What had she done?

Sansa sat up. Her eyes burned and her throat throbbed. Could they not have this one last morning? She reached out to touch his back but he stiffened under her touch, and she let her hand drop.

They sat there in silence for a long, painful moment. "Who is it you picture?" His voice was low, quick, tight.

"...Who I picture?" She knew what he meant but her heart was pounding, the lump in her throat throbbing. In the aching silence she heard him swallow.

"When we fuck—when we _fucked_ ," he corrected, bitterness seeping from his words, "who did you picture?"

"I didn't—"

"—I pictured your sister," he cut in swiftly, and it tore through her flesh, even though she already knew it, had always known it. "So who was it?"

"Get out." She despised herself for crying. Hot tears dribbled down her cheeks, along her jaw, dropped off her chin, as she stared into the hearth, Gendry in her peripheral vision.

To her further pain, Gendry did as told at once. He snatched up his clothes and dressed swiftly, not speaking or looking at her. He left, slamming the door so hard on his way that the room shook. Her glass jewelry box, made of Myrish glass, toppled off her dressing table and shattered.

* * *

Tormund was getting dressed the next morning when Ren poked his head into the tent. Agneta had already risen, but the tent still smelled of sex, and Ren demonstratively sniffed the air and smirked. It was a move, Tormund could not help but think, that would have made Agneta laugh and would likely have made Sansa Stark simply curl up and die.

Not that they would ever find out such a thing.

"She was with the blue-eyed lad," Ren informed him without any preamble, slipping into the tent as Tormund tied his tunic into place. "Heard them fucking in the hall last night. She's _loud_ ," he added with sly relish. Tormund would have laughed, would have joked, and a dozen quips were on the tip of his tongue, but—

—He would not joke about Jon Snow's woman ever again. He had told himself he would no longer be craven, and he had told himself he would face this like a man, face this honorably. He would not act the boy anymore. "Think she'll keep fucking him after you're married?" Ren asked conversationally, as Tormund pulled on his heaviest cloak, and they left the tent, every step clanging with their swords.

"Don't talk to me about who my wife will and won't fuck," Tormund ordered shortly as they walked, not looking at Ren. He heard Ren scoff.

"Already sounding like a southerner," he teased. They were let into the walls of Winterfell by the round-faced squire—Podrick, was it?—who was rumored to have a legendary cock. He'd have to tell Agneta, though the boy looked so innocent that Tormund could not help but think, with amusement, that Agneta would simply eat him alive.

The courtyard was tense. Sansa Stark's bannermen were milling about, packing their things and readying to return to their own family homes, and as Tormund and Ren passed them by, they stared at them with something like a warning, and Tormund had to stop Ren from picking fights as they walked. They bypassed the forge, and Tormund did not miss Gendry's strong back turned to him as the boy entered the forge with swift, clumsy movements, as though hastening to get away from prying eyes. 

He put Gendry from his mind. It was not his problem if the lad had had his heart broken. There were plenty of other pretty women for him to fuck. He wondered if Gendry had known of Jon's feelings for Sansa—and he wondered, too, if Gendry knew anything of what Sansa might have thought about those feelings.

_She's loud,_ Ren had said. Tormund wished it was not this thought on his mind as he went to speak privately with the woman Jon Snow had loved, wished he could stop his traitorous mind from wondering what, exactly might make Sansa Stark—southern, sweet-smelling, ladylike Sansa Stark—loud in a hall where anyone might hear. Brienne was approaching them, her usual stiff air of awkward decorum evident in every line of her body. Tormund knew better than to flirt today, but he still drew some amusement from the way she postured herself, as though bracing herself for his advance.

"Queen Sansa will speak with you privately, in her solar," Brienne informed them as she reached them.

"Thought she didn't like to be called Queen," Ren pointed out. Brienne looked down at Ren with her disgust unmasked.

"I address my queen as Lady in her presence, as it is her preference, but that does not make her anything other than a queen," Brienne informed him loftily, and Tormund shot Ren a look to stop him from laughing.

"Where's this...solar?" he asked, following her and abandoning Ren among the southerners, against his better judgment. Ren had the tendency to prevaricate, and the tension between the southerners and their people was taut as a tripwire—and Ren would be fool enough to get trapped in it.

"Just this way. Outside of the Lord's chambers," Brienne explained as he fell into step beside her. Brienne glanced at him sidelong. "You ought to learn well the layout of Winterfell, I suppose."

"Aye, and you ought to learn well who among my men will make trouble for you," Tormund advised in a low voice as they ascended narrow stone steps. At the top, just outside a heavy door, Brienne finally faced him, looking almost surprised. Tormund shifted, nodded back toward the courtyard. "Keep an eye out for Ren; he's a cock," he told her, and Brienne pulled a face at his wording. "He's the scarred one. Give him a taste of your blade and he'll soon shut his mouth," he promised.

"Do you believe this...Ren...will cause trouble among our bannermen?" Brienne asked, her hand moving instinctively to her swordbelt, all air of awkward decorum gone.

"It's more likely than not," Tormund admitted. He did not like to turn one of his own men in, but on the other hand, he knew his own men well and he knew what would keep them in line. Ren's bark was more than his bite, particularly if he knew there were a worthy adversary nearby—and Brienne would have been able to, unfortunately, trounce him in an instant.

Brienne studied him for a moment.

"You want this to work," she observed.

"Aye, I do. Now, let's get this over with," he said, and Brienne turned a heavy key and opened the door to a darkened hall. He wondered if it was this hall from which Ren had heard her fucking Gendry, and with effort he tore his mind from that dark wondering as they walked along the hall.

There was a flowery scent lingering in the air as they reached the solar. With a short bow and an announcement, Brienne showed him into Sansa Stark's solar.

* * *

Her eyes still ached from crying this morning. She had not seen Gendry since he had fled; she did not want to. There was a part of her-—the part of her that had grown up surrounded by men—that knew something of male pride and knew that, since Gendry could not cry, he would be cruel instead. But she was still a young woman who had been little loved and his words had cut her deeply.

_Who did you picture?_

Goosebumps prickled along her skin but she could not think of it now. She could not be a foolish girl, wounded by love, now. She had to be a queen, about to negotiate the fate of her kingdom.

So she sat at her desk and busied herself with reviewing scrolls as she heard Tormund and Brienne's low voices and heavy footfalls along the corridor outside. She kept her eyes, unseeing, fixed on the scroll before her as she heard the door open. She had shown too much weakness; she sensed Tormund had been able to read her thoughts last night—though she herself did not fully understand them. It was rare for her to feel attraction and she supposed that that was what she had felt last night. A simple, basic, biological urge propelled by the powerful grief and relief caused by Daenerys Targaryen's visit, she decided. Yet all the same she could not allow him to mistake it for genuine attraction; she could not allow him to gain the upper hand. It was not simply her pride at stake, but the fate of her people, too.

"Tormund Giantsbane," Brienne announced, and Sansa waited a beat before letting her gaze flick up.

_There was a woman in his tent,_ Brienne had advised her earlier that morning. _All night. I could hear them...from the parapet wall_. The swordswoman had flushed so much that Sansa had wondered if she was sweating in her armor.

_Let him have his final night of indulgence_ , Sansa had replied coolly. And she wished it were not this thought haunting her as Brienne closed the door behind Tormund, leaving them alone together just as she met his dark, warm eyes.

_I could hear them...from the parapet wall._

Sansa's mouth felt dry; she licked her lips, watched his eyes flick down. Just like last night. Why was she again starting off like such a foolish maiden?

"Well-rested, my queen?" Tormund asked with heavy irony, and heat rose to her neck and cheeks.

He had his own spies, too, after all.

He must have known.

"No worse off than you, I'd wager," Sansa replied sweetly, rising to her feet. Tormund scoffed but did not avert his eyes; he stepped closer. Which woman had he taken to his tent, she wondered? No, it did not matter. She did not care which woman—or women—he had taken to his tent for his final night of revelry. Who was she to begrudge him one last night of carnal sin?

After all, they would never—they would never _fuck_.

"Have you decided?" he asked then. "I've made my choice."

"I have," she said slowly.

Was it her imagination? Why was there this...strange...awareness between them? Was he thinking of laying together, too, or was it just her mind playing tricks on her? "I stand by my suggestion that we are transparent with our peoples," she continued, walking around the desk. Her hip brushed the desk and she saw his eyes flick to the contact, so briefly. As they stood before each other she wished she had had the fire in the hearth put out; her solar was far too warm.

"I agree," Tormund said at last. "And I think it should happen soon. We need to begin training our army and building our resources."

"Yes, Ser Davos is working on an inventory of our weaponry and should be finished within a few days," Sansa said, briefly forgetting the tension strung so taut between them. "I would like to see an inventory of your weaponry as well. It will take longer in these cold months to build up our stores and we'd better start at once. We'll also need to pool our resources for food stores; training an army always requires more food. And we'll need to take an inventory of everyone's abilities, too, before we even start on weaponry."

Tormund's lips twitched. "What?" she demanded, and she was shocked to see his gaze soften—or perhaps she was merely misreading him.

"It's no wonder Jon trusted his people to you," Tormund mused, and again those fingers wrapped round her heart and squeezed, so that she had to look away.

"This is me doing my best to honor that trust," she said, staring into the hearth, willing her eyes to stop burning. "And I know he trusted you for good reason, too. He was no fool," she added. She heard Tormund laugh, and she looked back to him sharply.

"I knew him as a lad in love. He _was_ a fool, sometimes," Tormund said, shaking his head. Again there was a lump forming in her throat. She had heard whispers of Ygritte, the girl Jon had loved, and there was a sickened curiosity that always came hand-in-hand with a powerful, poisonous envy that she did not often see in herself. She would not ask about Ygritte. She did not want to know about the girl Jon had loved. "But," Tormund continued, looking back at her, "not the only man to ever act a fool over a woman," he added self-deprecatingly.

"I doubt you've ever been a fool in love. Always the military man, always the warrior," Sansa said, then wished she'd not said her mind. The words had a lilt to them; this was a conversation for a maid and her lover in the tempting cover of night, with sweet wine coursing through them, meant to be said with sly eyes and a sweet tongue. This was not a conversation for two leaders. "Forgive me," she interrupted before he could respond. "I suppose I have a natural curiosity of people and sometimes it gets the better of me."

She looked down and saw him set a gloved hand over hers; she realized, belatedly, that she had been fidgeting with the end of her sleeve, and she dropped her hands, as he pulled his own hand away. Shivers rippled through her at his touch. _Why_ was she acting like a blushing maiden? "I-I'm still learning how to do this," she admitted.

"I am, too," Tormund replied. "Never married a queen before."

"Then we'll do it today?" she asked briskly, straightening and attempting to banish those strange thoughts. Tormund's eyes hardened.

"Aye, we'll announce it together, and we'll tell them why we're doing it," he agreed.

They stood in silence, each unsure of what to do now. And then Tormund spoke the words that healed her heart and broke it all over again. "Lord Crow would be proud of you. You're brave, and strong, like him."

She could not look at him. After all of the pain, the fear, the anxiety, the confusion, and the grief—such words brought her unimaginable joy and sorrow at once, and she clenched her jaw to stop herself from beginning to cry. It would not do. And yet—

She risked a glance at him, and he was watching her carefully—reading her, peeling back her layers, seeing the depths of her heart, and it would not do. She looked away, blinking rapidly.

_Someone brave, and gentle, and strong,_ her father had once said, so many years ago. So many lifetimes ago. She had been so many different people since her father had said those words. _Someone worthy of you. Someone brave, and gentle, and strong._

Tormund was being kind, kinder than she would have thought him capable, but it was making her facade crack. It would not do. Perhaps she was not steel after all; perhaps she was still porcelain after all.

"He was a Stark, and I am too," she finally said, when the urge to cry had passed and she felt solid again. She met Tormund's eyes once more. "Thank you."

_I am steel,_ she told herself, after they had agreed to organize their peoples in the courtyard of Winterfell this evening. _I am steel, I am steel, I am steel_.

* * *

He had seen it, seen what he had suspected all along. Tormund left Sansa Stark's solar, weighed down by what he had learned. He knew where the crypts of Winterfell were and after parting from Brienne, he slipped away to the crypts with a single torch.

He would never forget the look on Sansa Stark's face as he had said, _Lord Crow would be proud of you._ And, he knew, he would also never forget the look on her face as he had said, _I knew him as a lad in love._

He had known it from the beginning, had seen the tree being planted, had known what it would grow into. The moment Sansa Stark had come to Castle Black he had seen the love that would grow between her and Jon—and, he'd seen that love cut down, too.

In the crypts he found Jon Snow's likeness, and he stood before it. He was not given to sentiment, or at least he did not allow himself to be. He didn't believe Jon Snow was here, in this crypt, but he did not know how else he could possibly speak with Jon Snow's ghost. After all, he was old enough to know that the ghosts that haunted him were his own guilt, chasing him, haunting him.

And so he resolved that they would build something out of what Daenerys Targaryen had cut down.

* * *

 

Aegon's ghost falsed through the Red Keep, and Dany followed him to the cellars, where he drifted between dragon skulls, danced among the shadows, whispers of smoke. 

_You're a dragon,_ he told her, and she breathed him in.  _Be a dragon._


	7. Fool's Gold

  _You saw my pain, washed out in the rain,_

_Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins..._

* * *

No one asked Sansa how she felt about the wedding, though she knew it was on everyone's minds, for no one was able to quite meet her eyes whenever the impending wedding was referenced—and as she spent the day preparing with her council, it was referenced often.

But Sansa put it from her mind, like Jon would have: she simply focused on the task at hand. It did not matter how she felt; what mattered was that she succeeded. And so the hours slipped away, until it was well past sundown, and even from her solar she could hear the commotion of her people and Tormund's people being collected together, an effort driven by her council and by Tormund's closest people: the scarred-faced man named Ren, and a petite swordswoman named Agneta.

And now Sansa found herself standing alone in the Great Keep once more, waiting for Tormund. This was to be their final convening before they made their announcement.

The candlelight flickered; Sansa paced. If all went according to plan, they would be married tomorrow. Though they had agreed that they would not fuck, it would of course be necessary for them to live together, to share a bed, to sleep and wake side by side, for that was of course the way; even the free folk held with such traditions. It could not be escaped.

And so once again she would be marrying a man that did not love her—though of all of the men Sansa had married or been agreed to marry, Tormund was, by far, the worthiest.

But he wasn't who she'd wanted. None of them had been.

 _Who did you picture?_ Gendry had asked, poison in his voice.

Here in the silence, with no one but herself while she waited to once again fall into her destiny, Sansa could admit the truth.

She had pictured Jon. She had thought of Jon. She had _wanted_ Jon. For every time she had told herself she would not think of him, he had slipped through her mind, a shadowy specter of the love she had nearly had, a thousand times more.

She had pictured Jon.

She had pictured soft grey eyes and a soft voice and scarred, calloused hands, and the softest of touches, kisses soft as snowflakes, a love warming her so that she would never be lonely or sad again—

—No.

Here he was again, this ghost breaking her once more.

She would not think of him.

Not anymore.

She could not.

She had never been destined for a marriage of love, anyway. She had never been destined for love at all. 

It was time to accept that.

_But all the stories had promised..._

She needed to accept that all of the stories and all of the songs had been lies. After all, wasn't this pain she felt precisely  _why_ the stories had been written and the songs been sung, precisely  _why_ they were still written, still sung? We clung to our petty hopes and desires and when we did not find our dreams we invented them, fool's gold, and passed them on to those after us, shielding our children from the truth—until they were old themselves—that it had never been real gold at all. Jon had made her believe again, so foolishly, so childishly, that she had held real gold in her hands. Jon had made her a child again. Now she was simply re-learning a lesson that Joffrey, Cersei, Margaery, Ramsay, and Baelish had taught her before. 

It was time to accept that. 

The side door banged open, and Brienne showed Tormund in. She nodded to Sansa, a fortifying nod that made Sansa stand a little taller as the door swung shut and she was left alone with Tormund. He looked different; she realized he was wearing less of his heavy furs and armor, and was clad in something simpler than he usually wore. He looked less like a warrior and more like a man, and it occurred to her that he had had the same thought that she had had, for she too wore her simplest dress. For a man who so valiantly pretended to be beyond image, beyond lies, he was surprisingly conscious of his choices.

"They're all there. No fights yet," Tormund reported, instead of greeting her. There was a grim determination about him; it was as though they were about to go into battle. This was a battle of a different kind, this was the only sort of battle she knew how to fight. It seemed he knew how to as well.

"Thank you," she said. Tormund was studying her, brows drawn together. "What?"

It felt ridiculous, absurd, to meet his eyes—yet it was absurd that she felt she could not. But every time their eyes met it was a glancing blow; it was a flickering candle cast upon something, revealing something. But what was it that she was so afraid of revealing?

"We can't go back from this," he warned her. "Once it's done, it's done, and we'll spend the rest of our lives together."

The words sank in as they regarded each other. 

"If this is what it takes," she began, but she could not finish her sentence, and she gestured limply. She was strangely lightheaded. Every bad memory was resurfacing at once. She had thought Jon had healed those wounds—

—No, she would not think of him.

Sansa shrugged finally, meeting Tormund's eyes again.

"Are you certain? Are you sure this is what you want?" he pressed, stepping closer. She wished he did not pry; not like this, anyway. It made her weak.

"I've made my decision. I'm certain. This is what we owe to our people—" she began—

"— _No_ ," Tormund said suddenly, slamming his fist on the table beside them, and it rattled and Sansa jumped. He looked furious, out of nowhere. "If we're to share our lives, you'll be honest. No more pretty words, no more masks. No more hiding. No pretty southern lies...And no parroting Jon's words, either. You'll be yourself before me."

"I'm not hiding," Sansa countered, her face flushing, as Tormund approached her.

"You are," he argued, "and it'll stop."

"What do you want me to say? This isn't the moment for me to break down and weep," Sansa hissed, keenly aware of how easy it might be for her council to hear them from the other side of the door that Brienne had opened. "Neither of us wants this but we know it's the best course of action. I am a queen, and that means I must make the hard choices and do so with grace."

"Aye, but soon you'll be my wife, and there will be no lies."

The silence crackled as they stared at each other, a finger's width apart. "You are not an honest woman," Tormund continued in a low voice. "Maybe that worked with southern boys. Maybe it even worked on your pretty cousin."

There was an insinuation to his words—

— _your pretty cousin—_

—No, she would not think of him.

"Honest woman? Is this about my _morals_?" she demanded, her outrage rising like a tide, but she didn't step back from Tormund. "Is this about Gendry—"

"—Of course not," he interrupted with a bark of a laugh, tossing his head back. "You think I give a fuck who you've fucked? No, this isn't about fucking. This is about you withholding truths; this is about you lying to everyone around you, hiding from everyone around you."

"I do not hide," she insisted, but she felt as though thousands of eyes were upon her, though Tormund was the only one looking at her. His gaze, she decided, was too intense, too incisive. He was peeling her apart, he was looking at her as though she were naked, naked to her very soul.

And then something in his gaze softened, or perhaps warmed. For the briefest flash, he was not so hard, so brittle, and he tilted his head to the side, his eyes narrowing into crescents as he read her soul. "Why would you think I hide anything?" she pressed, her hand fluttering to her breastbone, and she wondered why she'd done it, and his eyes followed the movement before returning to her eyes, and holding the gaze.

His lips parted; he was about to speak words that would matter to her, she could taste it. 

"—Lady Sansa?"

Brienne had opened the door again, and Sansa hastily stepped back from Tormund. "They're ready," Brienne added, looking between them. "Everyone is assembled."

The door swung shut once more. Sansa let out a breath, and Tormund shifted and raked a large hand through his wild hair.

"Shall we?" Sansa asked, looking to Tormund.

"Aye, we shall." They turned to the large doors that faced out to the courtyard. Sansa's heart was throbbing in her throat. Tormund went to the doors first, and began to push them open. He glanced back at her one last time, dark eyes studying her, then looked away and pushed the doors open to their fate.

The navy night was turned gold by the torches; a sea of faces looked back at her, indistinguishable from each other and gilded by the fires so that it looked like hundreds of golden masks faced them. Tormund and Sansa walked side by side into the silent crowd. The air was crackling; the crowds parted for them easily as they walked to the stage of sorts that had been hastily constructed for them by Podrick, and perhaps Gendry. _He grew his own hangman's tree_. Jon's cloak was heavy on her shoulders and she wished that his scent had not faded so quickly from it. She would have given anything to have his warm embrace in this moment—

—No, she would not think of him.

But _when_ would she stop thinking of him?

When would it end?

Tormund paused at the stage and gestured for her to walk up the steps first. Their eyes met as he did, and he nodded to her discretely before following her up to their place.

And now those hundred golden masks were fixed on her once more. It would be worth it, she told herself. To save those that Jon had so loved, to keep the north free from Daenerys Targaryen's burning grip, she would gladly give of herself. And Tormund, she reminded herself, was doing the same. She was not the only one to compromise herself in this act. This was against everything that he stood for, everything that he valued.

Perhaps she was not the only one who hid from everyone—for in this blinding moment of gold and fear she had no choice but to be truthful with herself. She _did_ hide from everyone, it was true, just as she ran from her thoughts of Jon, only embracing them so weakly in her moments of fear and pain.

"You all have been gathered here because of the threat we faced—the threat your queen, Sansa, saved you from yesterday," Tormund called out to the silent watchers. "The dragon queen wants the north, and she won't be held off forever."

Tormund looked back at her, prompting her. Sansa stepped forward, Jon's cloak whipping around her legs. Snowflakes dotted and stung her cheeks; she pretended it was Jon's spirit, touching her from elsewhere as he had not touched her in life.

She could do this.

"I gave Queen Daenerys the Neck, but she'll want more, and she'll come back for it—with fire and blood," Sansa said loudly, clearly, surprising herself with the strength of her voice. She felt Tormund watching her, saw him nod once again, a nearly imperceptible gesture of approval, and she continued, strengthened. "And she'll take it, easily, if we are fractured. My cousin Jon Snow fought for us to be united but since his death we have let go of his legacy. There has been fault on both sides, but from now on, it will stop. We cannot be divided, or we will lose our independence."

There was a murmur rising from the crowd like smoke; defensive tones, the words muddled, reached her. She glanced at Tormund—it was his turn, now, she felt.

"Silence," he boomed, and the murmurs died, and the courtyard was silent once more. "There'll be no more fighting on either side. There'll be no more _sides_ anymore, for that matter. You chose me as your leader, and you chose Sansa Stark as your leader. And leaders make the hard choices—and as Sansa Stark told me, they do so with grace," he added, almost ruefully. "We free folk don't believe in the politics of the southerners. We don't believe in marrying for ambition. And Sansa Stark has been sold off to men for their own ambition more times than I can keep count of; she has no wish to marry again, and she's told me as much. Neither of us wish to marry.

"But we've come to an agreement that we _will_ marry. We will join our people together. This is not done out of love, or ambition—this is not something that either of us wants."

He paused, let his words sink in. The scars on her back tingled and itched, and Tormund was looking down at her again. No one had ever acknowledged her history in such a way; if they had, it had only ever been accusatory, it had only ever been a sword meant to cut her. _Lady Lannister,_ Lyanna Mormont had called her. That still stung, still haunted her in the dark hours of the night when she was alone with her grief and guilt and shame. In the darkness she could compose a thousand and one retorts and even if one of them had silenced Lyanna Mormont, they would never silence her own grief. 

She had not realized that Tormund knew of her legacy—and she would never have guessed that he would speak of it with empathy. For how could such a warrior understand the fear and pain of a helpless little girl?

This man was a mystery.

"Tormund Giantsbane and I will marry tomorrow," she said, her words ringing through the courtyard, and she numbly watched her people shuffle and stir with shock. "We will marry in the godswood, so that we may make our intent official. This is what we feel we must do to stop the fighting; this is what we feel is our only choice left to us. Jon left the north in my hands and I feel it is my task to keep you all safe."

She let her words sink in now, too, following Tormund's lead. There was shouting, now. Angry voices rose up, but Sansa could hear none of them. Below, Ren, Agneta, Brienne, and Podrick attempted to quell the disturbance.

"There will be no more fighting," Tormund yelled out once again, over the commotion. "The next disagreement between the free folk and the northerners will not be taken lightly. We are one people now and we mean to keep our independence from the dragon bitch."

There were cheers among the shouts; Sansa did not know where to look. It was chaos. She looked to Tormund. "That's all we can tell them," he said in a low voice, turning to her—this man who was to be her husband. "We've told them what we meant to."

There were snowflakes in his hair, melting on his shoulders. This close, she had to crane her neck again to meet his eyes, and she was reminded of their first meeting, of that first failure.

She ought to thank him. It was on the tip of her tongue, but she could not say the words. "You've got something on your mind," Tormund observed now, stepping closer.

"I've got many things on my mind," Sansa replied, then only belatedly realized the defensiveness of her tone. Tormund let out a long sigh and it clouded in the air before him.

"Aye, and none of them visible to me," he said, and he turned from her. "Do not forget what I said."

No more hiding.

Sansa looked for Gendry in the crowd, but he was nowhere to be found.

* * *

The fallout from their announcement had been incredible. It had taken hours for Sansa and Tormund to field all of the angry questions, and it was well past midnight when Sansa was finally alone in her chambers, weak and trembling from all that the last few days had taken from her.

Alone, in her rooms, she undressed before her mirror. In the reflection she saw evidence of Gendry's last touches. She had not seen him all day. She supposed they would not speak again, would never heal the poison between them. But she was a queen, and it was her task to make the hard choices and to bear them with grace.

And yet she found herself dropping onto her bed, naked, her eyes wet. Gendry was now the only one left alive who knew of her scars from Ramsay, though they had never discussed in detail how she'd earned those scars. Brienne also knew that she had been injured by Ramsay, though she had never seen the scars.

_You are not an honest woman._

_No more hiding._

There was something so very lonely about bearing your pain where no one could see it. There was something so unbearable about giving your life to a man who did not know why your back was scarred, your flesh ruined. Though she and Tormund would never lay together—after all, they had agreed on it, she reminded herself—he would not know of all that had happened to her, all that she had survived.

He would never truly know her.

The only person who had known was Jon, though she had only shown him her scars for the briefest moment, on the night she had returned to Castle Black. She would never forget the way he'd looked after she had peeled back the bandages from her back, just enough to show him what had been done to her—would never forget the way his gaze had lingered on her skin as though he had trailed his fingertips over her skin in the lightest of touches, as though he had touched her like he loved her. It had been the first moment that she had felt that secret, squirming, shameful desire within her, though at the time she had buried it.

Jon had known who she was, what she had survived. And he had loved her for it, anyway.

No more pretty words, no more masks. No more hiding. 

And no more fool's gold, either. No more holding out for a thing she ought to know by now would never belong to her.

It came to her suddenly, what she must do. Sansa dressed once more. She slipped out of her chambers and into the night. This was Tormund's last night spent beyond the walls of Winterfell, and she had heard the wild carousing of the free folk for hours. The noise had eventually died down. Now, she saw his tent from the parapet wall. There was every likelihood that he had a woman in his tent, but after all, she was his wife now. He would have to honor her request.

Her boots crunched through the snow and she pulled Jon's cloak tighter as she approached Tormund's tent. Though it was undecorated, it was more spacious than the others, and set apart from the others in a way that made it clear that he was their leader, if not their king. A few free folk were seated round a campfire near the tent, and they watched her with silent, unfriendly eyes as she approached Tormund's tent. She nodded to them but did not stop, and did not allow their lack of welcome to throw her. She had one objective in mind.

_No more pretty words, no more masks. No more hiding._

"Hello?" she called into the tent as she stood before its opening. Voices abruptly died; she waited a moment, stamping her feet and shivering, and then, at long last, Agneta, wrapped in furs and hair wild, poked her head out of the tent.

"Ah, the queen in the north," Agneta observed, though it was not said unkindly. "Must mean I've got to leave," she added.

"O-only for a moment. I just need to speak with Tormund briefly," she reassured her, her face burning. There were love bites dotting what of Agneta's neck was visible, and she had never seen hair look quite so wild. She would not let herself think of what it might be like to have Tormund make her hair wild—but there were ever fewer safe corners of her mind these days.

Agneta's clever eyes lingered on her.

"Give me a moment, then he's all yours," she told her, and disappeared back into the tent. The movement brought a rush of the humid scent of sex; Sansa would not have known the scent before she had begun her private coupling with Gendry, but now she knew it well, and it only made her warmer and more flustered. But she would not doubt her choice; she would not be cowed now.

She was to be queen of the free folk now, after all.

"Thank you," she said to Agneta, as Agneta slipped out a moment later, wrapped so thickly in her furs that her slight form was hidden. It occurred to her that perhaps she ought to have made more of a fuss that her soon-to-be-husband had been occupied with a woman, but then, they had made it plain that this was not a love match.

"Come in," she heard Tormund call, and she pushed past the flap into the tent.

There was a small fire, but it was dying, now, and barely embers. The air was humid, and Tormund was pulling on a tunic, so that she saw a flash of strong, scarred flesh before he was covered again. Blankets and furs lay mussed; they had been wild, and as her eyes met Tormund's, her mind taunted her with an image burning and curious, of him above her, once more. He held her gaze like he knew her thoughts and it made her cheeks burn all the more.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said awkwardly. Tormund regarded her as he belted his tunic. He seemed to be trying not to laugh.

"Would've thought you'd be busy too," he said lightly, and his meaning was not lost. Sansa thought of Gendry's teeth grazing her own neck, his strong hands gripping her hips, bruising her flesh.

"Not anymore," she admitted. Distantly she heard the sounds of singing. Tomorrow, after their wedding, she wondered if there would be any celebration.

Probably not.

After all, this was not a love match, and people only celebrated for fucking, really. "I came because I needed to speak with you before we marry tomorrow."

She drew in a breath, and turned from him, fidgeting. Her stomach twisted and squirmed; her voice shook. "You said we shouldn't hide, and I think you're right. This can't work if you don't know who I really am, and—and there is something I need you to—"

She halted. She had not realized she was scared until now; she had not realized she was afraid of his reaction. She closed her eyes. Jon had trusted him; Jon had loved him. She could do this. "There's something I need you to understand about me," she continued at last.

"Aye, I thought there might be," Tormund said quietly, to her shock. She opened her eyes, turned to face him. "You have secrets," he added as their eyes met. "That much anyone can see."

_You're not an honest woman._

He was right. She wasn't honest. She wasn't open.

And why on earth should she be? After all that she had done, after all of the ways that she had failed?

She had resolved that no one would ever have her heart for a reason, after all. It was not only that to give of yourself was painful; it was also that she knew her heart was a blackened mess. Only Jon's sweet touch had begun to heal it, but he was gone now.

She stepped closer.

"I—I think it might be easier to understand if I show you," she began. Her hands were shaking, so she fisted them. "I do not mean to be cold, or distant, but I cannot help it. I do not mean to be dishonest, but I must be. It is how I protect myself—just as you carry a sword."

The dying firelight between them cast them both in muted gold. Tormund said nothing, but nodded, that same nod. A movement of encouragement. It made her think of Jon.

With numb, shaking fingers, she pushed Jon's cloak off her shoulders. "I need to show you what my last husband, Ramsay Bolton, did, so that you understand me. I don't—I don't think we'll be able to do this, if you don't understand me. You want honesty—so you'll have it. It's only fair."

Tormund watched without speaking as she undid the lacing of her own tunic. She had worn her sham free folk tunic, the better to undress more easily. His dark gaze followed the movement as she slipped out of the tunic, revealing her silks underneath. She could not seem to breathe, and it was too warm in this tent. She wished it did not smell so much like sex; it was doing her mind in. She turned from him, and pulled her silks over her head. She was still clad in the heavy pants that free folk women wore, but now her back was bare to him. She held her silks in a bunch over her breasts, her scars tingling and itching along her back.

Now he could see her ruined flesh; now he knew as much as Jon had known. She stared at the heavy skin of the tent, resisted the urge to pull on her clothing and flee from him. She heard movement and she glanced back over her shoulder; Tormund was approaching, his gaze fixed on her back. She looked forward again, her breathing tight and shallow, as he studied her skin.

"Did Jon know of this?" Tormund asked at last.

"He—he did," she admitted thickly.

He let out the softest scoff and it rushed along her back, made her scars itch, but she fisted her hands in her silks.

"That explains a hell of a lot." He paused. "Push your hair to the side; I want to see all of them."

She did as told, pulling her heavy hair over her shoulder, exposing the rest of her back. She felt Tormund step closer, until he was so close that she thought she could feel the heat of his body. Or perhaps it was her own heat. Or perhaps it was her imagination. "I didn't know of this," Tormund said, at long last.

"Well, now you know." She hated how feeble her voice became. She wanted to dress again but she sensed he was still looking, still studying her scars.

"Never saw a man look at Bolton like Jon looked at him. He lost himself a bit, that day. Now I know why."

They stood in the ringing silence. At long last, Sansa pulled her silks over her head, limbs trembling.

"I've only ever been married or promised to men who wanted to hurt me," she explained, still facing away from him. "So I apologize if I seem suspicious, or withdrawn. It's just fear."

"I don't want to hurt you."

She knelt down and grabbed the tunic, and pulled it over her head. When she turned around, Tormund's gaze was fixed on her, tracing down and then up again so quickly she nearly missed it. What had it meant? Did it mean anything at all?

"I-I know you don't." She was thrown off. "That's why I suggested that we marry. I trust you."

It was suddenly too much, and she needed to leave. This tent was too small, and part of her was reeling in horror at the fact that she had just taken off so much of her clothing before Tormund. "I should go. We'll have a long day tomorrow," she stammered, flushing and turning away from him. She snatched up Jon's cloak just as he knelt down to retrieve it for her, and their hands brushed. He pulled back slowly.

"Do you like your scars?"

It was such a strange question. Sansa stared at him, met his warm dark eyes turned gold by the dying fire.  _Fool's gold._

 _He was a fool, sometimes,_ Tormund had said.

"Like them?" she asked around the lump in her throat. "Of course not. They're hideous. They remind me of some of the worst moments of my life. Why would I like them?"

Tormund did not look away.

"Because they mean you lived through something. Because you survived a battle. I love every single one of my scars." He nodded downward to her. "You should love your battle scars. They're beautiful."

"I—"

She couldn't breathe. She watched Tormund study her, watched him breathe slowly, deeply, his broad shoulders rising. 

She didn't know what to say. "I should go," she said once more.

"Thank you," Tormund said to her back, her scarred, ruined, mutilated, ugly back.

She wasn't sure what for.

She turned and fled into the frost, and for a long moment she stood out front of the mouth of the tent, face tilted toward the heavens as she felt snowflakes sting her skin.

_You should love your battle scars. They're beautiful._

It had never occurred to her to love her scars. It had never occurred to her that she had been anything like a warrior at all.

 


	8. Threads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be published last weekend but this past week was literally the week from HELL and so many things went wrong that fanfic got pushed to the backburner. 
> 
> Just one more chapter after this and then an epilogue.

And they said the free folk were savages.

Tormund lay awake in his tent for hours, writhingly aware of the inadequacy of his response to Sansa's confession yet unable to determine what might have been a better one. Few matters of the heart stumped him anymore: he often felt he'd seen it all and knew human nature well enough at this point that he could advise himself on more or less any problem.

But he did not know what to do about his soon-to-be wife.

To go after her tonight would be to define things between them in a way that would not do well for her. He would become her savior, her confidante; he would be the one piecing her together again—or so she would believe—even though this was patently untrue. She was already whole. She did not need him any more than he needed her, and she needed no savior.

But she was so young, and she did not know her own strength yet, not _really_. She did not understand that what she had survived did not make her broken but made her wise, sharpened her and solidified beneath her like earth. She did not understand that this would not be the only grief she would endure, that soon it would just become one of so many painful things, scattered among the joy that would undoubtedly thread her life. She did not understand yet that this alone would not define her.

And moreover she did not understand marriages—not yet. That took experience that she was too young to have. Though Tormund himself had never married, he had been with women long enough to have learned a few things, and he knew that these moments of friction mattered—and that what felt good and _right_  in the moment was not necessarily what would be right for them in the long run, and that what felt like sweetness now would smell like rot later; what was vivid and intense and _important_ now would burn out too soon. 

But to _not_ go after her...

King Crow was with him in the tent on this night, as he always was, and his shadowy figure crept in and out of Tormund's heated half-sleep until dawn. Jon's private anguish, his haunted hunting of Ramsay Bolton—it turned sour in Tormund's mouth. He knew better Jon's torment now, for what man with any sort of heart, any sort of beliefs, would be able to look upon Sansa's scarred flesh and not feel a sick, twisted rage—a rage that turned something within them  _bad_?

And King Crow had been so young, too, and that alone was a tragedy that Tormund only understood better as time passed, until from this distance the boy who had so clumsily adored Ygritte seemed like a child. What might he have been, had he lived? What might he and Sansa have become? They could have struggled and shaped each other in the _right_ way, hurting and healing each other in turn as they learned how to love, forgiving each other along the way—forgiving themselves along the way.

But he was not Jon, and he would never be Jon. He knew this well. But Jon was with him the whole night, never leaving him be, and every time Tormund's mind drifted, so naturally yet so traitorously, to thoughts of the curve of her smooth waist, or the way her soft hair had trailed along her skin, or to the fierce gleam in her eyes against the sweetness of her smile, Jon's figure seemed to take sharper shape, until his guilt was the shape of a man who had once meant so much to Tormund, who only meant more to Tormund as time passed. And, strangest of all, was how the things about Jon that had once mattered so little to Tormund—his hidden sweetness, his clumsy fire, his secrets—mattered so much more, and the things that had once meant everything—his leadership, his strength, his beliefs—now seemed to fade.

He decided, in the end, that he would not run after her. He would not treat her like a wounded animal, his to protect and his to fix. He would be doing so out of guilt and grief for Jon, not out of a genuine belief that she needed him. She was not wounded and she was not his.

He would not try to be another Jon to her; this was no longer who she needed and it was not who he had ever been. The past could not be replicated, and former love, he knew, should be left untouched. He had decided to build something new with her and it would not be built upon old wounds, built upon the worst memories of her life—nor would it be built upon their memories of Jon.

* * *

"Why, that's a lovely dress," Sam was saying eagerly as he stumbled into Sansa's solar, but a dark warning look from Gilly and a sharp nod from Brienne made him skitter back into the hall, leaving the three women alone once more. The late afternoon sunlight sent shifting panels of gold across them all as they looked between each other, their bonds strong enough that words were unnecessary.

"This feels right," Sansa said at last, looking down at her dress, though she knew she did not need to explain her choices to Gilly and Brienne. "I know the plan was for me to dress as a woman of the free folk, but I'm _not_ a woman of the free folk. And when I was forced to marry Tyrion, they dressed me up like a Lannister—I won't be absorbed into another man's world, forced to disappear, ever again," she explained. "This time, this is my choice. I want to be  _me_ when I stand before the heart tree today."

"Yes, he is marrying Sansa Stark," Brienne agreed vehemently, "so you should look like Sansa Stark. It's Sansa Stark who's worked so hard to save the north."

Sansa turned from the two women to look back at the mirror. Softly glinting embroidery winked back at her, and the navy velvet was rich as nighttime. In the light, the glimmering embroidery turned the wolf on her dress ghostlike, and it shimmered as she breathed. 

Jon had liked this dress.

It was the day she had given him the cloak she had made, and though it had meant much to him, his eyes had lingered on her dress. Her sewing had always been one of the best parts of her and with it she had been able to make Jon look like _that_ , had been able to give Jon something that had meant so much to him that he had not taken it off for months—and then he had looked at her like she was beautiful and she had felt lovely, for a moment, that day in the courtyard. For the first time in so many years, she had felt good enough just as she was. 

So Tormund wanted honesty? He would get honesty, whether he liked it or not. This was her honest self, here in this dress.

But after last night, the idea of honesty seemed...jumbled. His words about her scars last night had meant something—but what, exactly, they meant, she didn't know just yet.

She had half-thought he might run after her, but he had not. Half of her was disappointed, and the other half of her was horrified at her own disappointment. She had thought there might have been some scene of comfort, of weeping in his strong arms as he whispered further kindnesses. She had pictured the whole drama rather indulgently as she had walked back to her solar in a daze, and had felt empty when it had not come to pass. And yet, here in the sobriety of day, she was glad that it had not, though she could not quite articulate why she was glad. She had the sense that she would have regretted it later, for some reason, though it would have felt nice to be comforted. 

"I'll do your braid," Gilly offered now, and Brienne begged off, offering to see to the wedding preparations which were being managed by Davos.

Sansa sat at her low vanity, with Gilly standing behind her. It had been some time since she had had her hair braided by another woman, but Gilly's fingers were deft. "You really have the loveliest hair. Your children will be lucky," she added.

Sometimes, Sansa forgot that Gilly had been a wildling too; that Gilly also believed, like the rest of the free folk, that red hair was lucky.

"Tormund and I agreed we would not—" she halted, skin flushing like a maiden. "—we would not lay together. So there won't be children."

"Mm."

She did not appreciate Gilly''s tone. Not at all.

But too often Gilly had been understanding when Sansa had felt so utterly misunderstood, and Gilly's kindness seemed inexhaustible, even when Sansa knew she was undeserving of it. She would not pick this fight, not with this kind, good woman who had given her so much. Not today, when today was meant to be about putting aside petty disagreements. "What will you do about Gendry?" Gilly asked now, quick fingers looping a braid along the side of Sansa's head. In the mirror, their eyes met. Sometimes Sansa forgot just how perceptive Gilly was.

She didn't know what she would do about Gendry, though she found herself thinking of her disappointment and relief that she and Tormund had had no further spectacle last night, and perhaps the billowing silence and resentment between her and Gendry was proof of where such theatric indulgence could lead.

Sansa was learning that sometimes there was no closure; sometimes there was no crowning moment that tied everything together. Real life was not like the songs; real life was messy, and sometimes those moments of closure that might feel so good in the moment could turn to rot. Perhaps there would be no moment of closure with Gendry. Perhaps what they had had would remain a dark, private, bloody chapter in both of their lives, a testament to their grief for the people they had lost and the simple futures they had forfeited.

"Nothing," she told Gilly's reflection, and Gilly nodded.

"Sometimes there just has to be pain there," she agreed, and goosebumps prickled along Sansa's skin.

She would not think of him.

Once Sansa's hair was braided, it was time to check on the preparations for the wedding. They had agreed it would be done in the godswood of Winterfell, for logistical reasons—this way, their wedding could be witnessed by as many as possible—and for more personal reasons as well. Sansa had always worshiped the New Gods as a child, but as she had grown older she had begun to feel a stronger affinity for the Old Gods.

Tormund had not resisted the idea, when it had been presented to him, and there had been something almost flippant in the way he'd agreed. This ceremony would not have the meaning for him that it held for her. He likely kept the Old Gods—didn't most of the free folk?—but they did not have marriage ceremonies in the way that the Northerners had them, and to him this would be just another part of the show. This saddened her. 

As soon as Sansa left her solar, she was hit with the scent of food. When she looked out into the courtyard, it was filled with free folk and Northerners alike; they were cooking together, preparing for the wedding feast: roasting meat over spits, leaning over enormous pots. There was tension; this was no easy partnership. But still they were working together, cooperating, not fighting.

It was already working.

Relief made her sag like a doll against the wall, and Gilly looked back at her with a smile.

"Jon would have been proud," she said, lightly, looking back out at the courtyard. "Even he never got to see quite this kind of cooperation."

Sansa looked over the rooftops, over the walls of Winterfell, to the looming, ancient pines in the distance that crowned the horizon like ghosts bearing witness, their blackened tops turned gold by the setting sun.

* * *

Her dream had been so vivid. Dany walked along the halls to the Tower of the Hand. For the first time, the humid smog did not cow her. There would be smog and smoke for some time—but this was the price of war. She had learned it at such an early age: war and conquest did not make for clear skies and pretty flowers. The city would be ravaged for some time but eventually it would heal.

And so would the North. Eventually.

Aegon walked with her every step. Due to the smog, the halls were darker than they should have been in broad daylight, and she carried a torch with her to light her path through the murky dark. She drew strength from the fire, from the flicker of gold to violet.

Tyrion was in his rooms, bent over parchment, a half-drunk glass of wine beside him. A bejeweled, short blade—meant for opening wax-sealed scrolls—and a small pot of wax and the seal of the Hand sat beside the wine. 

"Your Grace," he greeted suspiciously when she closed the door behind her. "To what do I owe this ... honor?"

There were no vacant braziers for Dany to leave her torch, so she tossed it into the hearth, and the kindling there burst into brilliant plumes of flame. She stared, mesmerized, for a moment, before turning back to Tyrion, the fire reflected in his mismatched eyes.

"We must amass our army and ride for the north," she informed him. She did not waver. She had fire in her eyes—but then, so did Tyrion.

"Have you lost your mind?" he asked calmly. "We have already discussed this. We have agreed on peace, and you were handed the Neck, for no reason other than your great beasts circling over Sansa Stark's very clever head."

"You saw their army," Dany said, circling Tyrion until she stood at one of the windows. Heavy gold silk had been tacked up, to keep out the smog, and she parted it now to peer out at the city that she had conquered. Soon, Winterfell and the north would look like this, too.

And for the briefest moment there was a flash of clarity.

What was she doing? What the  _hell_ was she doing?

Aegon was before her, she was breathing him in, choking on him like smoke. But he dissipated again, and she turned hastily from the window. Tyrion had got to his feet and was regarding her with the same wariness with which he looked at Drogon: like she was a beast, like she was untamable, like he was praying if he negotiated correctly he might be able to get her back in her chains. "It would be easy to defeat them," she added, standing a little taller. His clever eyes followed the tiny movement, did not miss the meaning of that tiny movement.

"We have discussed this, your Grace. Just because you _can_ defeat them does not mean you _should_ —if you mean to rule over Westeros, if you mean to heal Westeros as you have said so very many times."

"You saw the Neck. It is barely populated—Sansa Stark has given me nothing."

Dany began pacing. Aegon stood in the corner of the room, by Tyrion's canopy bed, his mournful dark eyes resting on her like weights, like stones in the lining of her dress, weighing her down. He had been so comforting to her, earlier. Why did he suddenly seem strange to her? He looked more northern than ever today, with his scruff and his shabby cloak, the direwolf stamped onto the leather straps crisscrossing over his lean chest. 

She heard Tyrion sigh.

"I know it is difficult, your Grace," Tyrion began more gently, "but you must focus on the troubles here, in King's Landing. We have not even begun to heal this city alone and the mess is overwhelming. I am not even certain of whether we will be able to accomplish this in our lifetimes—I work day and night on this task yet I have no answers. The last thing I want is to add more land, more people, to this task."

"Perhaps I should find a new Hand—"

"—Perhaps indeed, you little monster!" Tyrion bellowed, and with a shove he overturned the table. The crystal glass shattered; red wine splattered among the piles of parchment and parchment fluttered to the ground like snow. Heaving, Tyrion turned back to her, his eyes wild. "If you can find another hand clever enough yet patient enough to wrangle you and your many wild, violent, idiotic urges, then have at it!"

"How dare you," she whispered.

They stared at each other, seeing each other truer than they had ever before. Yet over Tyrion's shoulder she saw him again: Aegon, his grey eyes turning violet slowly, flashing with the fire in the hearth.

_You're a dragon. Be a dragon._

"They say that a Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing," Tyrion began slowly, shoulders rising and falling. "I have never understood why they say that as well as I do now." 

"I am not alone." 

But even as she said it she thought she could have cried. 

She was alone. 

If she looked too closely at Tyrion she could see the tall, golden spectre of Jaime Lannister turning to slay her father for his  _urges_ , the very same Jaime Lannister who had so willfully charged on horseback at Drogon, the same Jaime Lannister she had watched fall to his death. The same golden Lannister blood filled Tyrion as it had Jaime. 

He was going to try and kill her. 

Like his brother before him, Tyrion would try and kill her. 

* * *

"You're not supposed to see each other before the ceremony...I think," Agneta was saying. Ren snorted.

"Expert in kneeler weddings now, are you?"

"I think I remember Snow talking about it, to Ygritte," Agneta shot back.

The tent grew quiet for a moment. "Anyway," Agneta said now, "everyone's cooking together in the courtyard. Seems like it's going well. They're all playing nice."

"Aye, they had better," Tormund said heavily, then raked the comb through his wild hair. Agneta had pilfered it for him from the kneelers. Though he objected to the idea of grooming for a woman, Tormund found himself here, his skin red and raw from a bath and his hair and beard shorter than it had been since he was a lad, the ground around him dusted with coarse red hair.

"As long as Ren keeps his mouth shut," Agneta added cheekily, but she had spoken the very words on Tormund's mind.

"At the feast," he began carefully—he was not a man to weigh his words but this had to be handled delicately—not looking at Agneta or Ren as he raked the comb through his beard, "you won't speak of Ygritte."

" _Ygritte_?" Ren blurted out, but Agneta's eyes narrowed into clever crescents. "Why not? Seems a bit strange. She's been dead years now, and it's not like your Queen knew her."

"Aye, she didn't. Wonder if she knew _of_ her, though," Agneta remarked, and Tormund shot her a warning look. The woman was too damned smart, but he was not worried about her like he was worried about Ren—who was clever enough to pick up on certain things, such as, perhaps, King Crow's strained, hidden desire for his supposed half-sister, but not clever enough to realize that the Queen in the North had her own secret pains, too.

"If we're to go to all this trouble to forge a bond between our peoples, why shouldn't Sansa Stark know of Jon and Ygritte?" Ren pressed. "It's almost like Lord Crow set the precedent before anyone knew any of this would happen. They're what started all of this, really, or the Crow wouldn't've ever given a rat's arse about us."

"Just don't mention it, Ren," Agneta snapped. "Forget about it."

Ren looked bemused, but Agneta's clear understanding of Tormund's concerns only set him more ill at ease. If Agneta had seen enough to understand, then others would have, too. And on a night when the ale was flowing it was only too likely that someone else might blurt out something that would turn Sansa's head.

He did not know if she knew about Ygritte, but to bring up Jon at all on this day would be a painful mistake, and to bring up Jon's past lover—who had one _quite noticeable_ similarity to Sansa in particular—would only make things worse. It would bring up questions better left unasked, it would reopen wounds that needed to begin closing if she was to ever have any peace.

"Alright, alright," Ren conceded, hassled, waving them off. "Calm down. I wasn't planning to make a speech about the girl."

"You'd better not," Agneta said. "Now, how is our kneeler looking?" she teased, changing the subject swiftly, and she and Ren looked to Tormund and began laughing. Tormund tried to scowl but found himself laughing.

"Would you like some wine, _m'lord_?" Ren teased, bowing dramatically with a flourish to Tormund.

"Too refined. You're a man of the free folk and you're our leader because we chose you. You ought to look it. Not like some southron lord."

Agneta mussed his still-damp hair. It was already curling, anyway. No amount of fine oils could have tamed his hair. "There," she said, stepping back. "You look like _you_ , now. She's marrying Tormund Giantsbane, chosen leader of the free folk. ...Just a bit shorn, is all, like sheep."

Tormund laughed, and drew Agneta in for a tight embrace. Ren pushed his way in and then they were all laughing, but their laughter died quickly. Things would change, now, and they could never go back to the way things had once been. They each sobered, pulling back.

"Well, it shouldn't be long, now," Ren muttered. "I'll just go see how—how things are coming along." He left, and Agneta and Tormund were alone.

"He won't bring up Ygritte. If he does I'll stab him, nice and quick," she reassured Tormund. "Besides, it isn't as if your new wife couldn't handle it."

"Aye, she could, but it would be unkind," Tormund said.

"I think so too," Agneta agreed.

So she had seen it, too.

And again Tormund had a stab of unease.

We never kept our secrets so well as we thought. The secrets of our hearts were so often stitched into our sleeves, for all the world to see while we pretended no one could know. For who could have looked upon Jon and Sansa when their eyes met and not known, precisely, the secrets of their hearts? It was written all over their skin.

"Looks like it's nearly time." Ren had poked his head back into the tent. "Come along, m'lord."

"Oh, shut up," Agneta said with a laugh.

* * *

The late afternoon sun cast all of Winterfell in gold as Sansa walked toward the godswood. There was a tightening in her belly now, ever tautening. There was no reason to be nervous, as nervous as a maiden. She was no maiden, after all, and this was hardly her first wedding.

There was a strange, dark magic about Winterfell that made her think of faeries as she walked with Gilly through the courtyard and as the sun set ever faster, until the torches and fires became points of gold in the violet dusk. All eyes were upon her and though there was more harmony than she had expected there was also a rising, mounting tension—or was it just a tension within her? As the world darkened, the magic began to glimmer darkly around them.

They had specifically chosen to remove any ceremony or pretense; this would be a bare ceremony, with no beauty attached to it. There would be the wedding, and then the feast, and then it would be done. And yet as Sansa approached the godswood, which was already filled with northerners and free folk alike, she saw that this was not strictly true. Each person carried a candle, which only became more evident as the sun set further, until all was dark, save for the hundreds of points of tiny gold. So too had candles lined her path to the heart tree, where Tormund would be waiting for her.

A lump formed in her throat and Sansa turned to Gilly.

"This wasn't supposed—"

"—Shh. These people need something beautiful," Gilly whispered back, and she looped her arm through Sansa's. "And you needed something beautiful, too. Just let yourself be happy."

It wasn't Jon waiting for her at the end of this path, but it was someone Jon had loved, someone Jon had trusted, and the people lining her walk to the heart tree were people that mattered to Sansa, people who needed her protection. This was not like her other weddings; this was something so much more personal, and to someone so much more worthy.

The end of her path, the heart tree, was still obscured, but the crowd began to part as they saw her.

* * *

"My urges," Dany said slowly, now. Behind Tyrion, Aegon glimmered and flashed silver like he was made of dark jewels. She stared at him though she was afraid to take her eyes off the dwarf, for what if he vanished? 

What if he left her alone? 

"You know yourself as well as I do, your Grace, and you know you have sometimes violent impulses," Tyrion countered, his hands edging outward as though he were balancing on a very narrow beam. He tilted his head. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," she said sharply, but when she focused on Tyrion, Aegon began to flicker as though about to dissipate. 

The room grew darker. The world had contracted to this very point. Dany's blood pounded in her ears and her mouth grew dry. 

"Your Grace, I am...fearful...for your state of mind," Tyrion said quietly. "You are unwell. Perhaps your grief..." 

"I am not unwell," Dany interrupted sharply. Tyrion nodded, once, slowly. She watched him swallow. 

 _Aegon Aegon Aegon,_ her blood pounded. 

* * *

"Here it is." The old man, Davos, showed Tormund to the famed heart tree. Blood-red eyes, turned inky black in the growing darkness, stared back at him, and a chill ran down his spine. He had seen enough to know these eyes could indeed see him, and he did not take this moment lightly. To make such a contract here—for what was marriage but a contract?—could not be taken lightly. This had to be permanent. This had to be forever.

And yet he could not help but think of Orell's philosophy, a view of the world that he had come to share, cynical though it was.

_People work together when it suits them. They love each other when it suits them, and they kill each other when it suits them._

A sea of free folk and northerners lay behind him, and Tormund briefly turned from the heart tree to look back at them. In this moment they all stood there, intermingled, each holding a single candle. It was a beautiful sight—for it suited them all, to work together now, when dragons had circled overhead so recently and when they were all still so war-ravaged and grief-stricken. But Tormund knew people were fickle—all people, whether free folk or kneeler—and he knew that this would only last as long as it suited them.

"Never seen anything like it," Davos said now, gruffly, in a low voice. "Only seen the fear of gods do this, before."

"It is the fear of dragons," Tormund corrected, and he turned away from them and back to Davos. "Where is the bastard boy?"

Davos let out a short sigh that clouded before him, and looked down at the packed snow beneath his feet.

"At the forge."

"Aye, I guessed as much."

"Nothing to be done there but let time do its will," Davos said, and Tormund nodded. He was not concerned for Gendry. If anything, he felt that this interruption would be the best for both Gendry and Sansa. 

It felt like he was about to do battle. The godswood around him was in crystal clear focus; he saw every leaf, heard every mutter, felt every flicker of flames so far from him. His entire body was ringing like a bell and he thought if he took one breath he would burst into flame. He knew what to do with this energy normally but now there was nowhere for it to go. There was no battle to be fought.

"There she is. Better get started," Davos said, and Tormund's belly clenched. He had to force himself to turn around; he thought of what Agneta had said of the tradition that they should not see each other but this was not a wedding to be sung about in songs; this was a wedding between two adults and he would not insult either of them with foolish traditions.

So he turned to face his wife.

At the other end of the godswood stood Sansa, in a dark blue dress that looked familiar, and Jon's old familiar cloak set about her slender shoulders. She was looking around her in awe at the people standing around her, holding candles.

She was still innocent enough, still kind enough, to believe that this was lovely without price.

Though he knew her more clever and more pragmatic than this, for a flash she was an innocent maid again, ready to believe in the good of the people around her, and he almost got swept up in the spell for a moment too, and his heart swelled with hope. It was not practical for a leader to be hopeful or blindly optimistic but he needed a moment's rest from the burden of reality, and so did this woman who had had her childhood slashed from her. He was owed this and he owed her this; their people owed them a moment's hope and perhaps they were only doing this out of recognition of this fact.

But to have the scars that she had yet have the hope in her eyes as she did now...

His own scars tingled. Her skin may have been scarred but her soul was smooth as fresh snow. He was old enough to know there was no strength quite like that, no power as great as the will to find beauty in the world when it had only shown you ugliness.

Their eyes met as Sansa walked, and a hush fell over the godswood. In the silence they were breathing in the gods.

* * *

He was going to kill her. Perhaps it had been his plan all along. 

_Aegon Aegon Aegon._

There was a split second where their eyes met and a moment of absolute awareness engulfed them, blinding and agonizing, as they each realized what was about to happen. And in that split second, Dany felt profound grief, for she had come to care very deeply for Tyrion. 

They moved in the same instant, but she was younger, was not half-drunk, was superior in all ways. The scroll-opener on his table gleamed darkly like dragonglass and he did not have the strength he needed to raise the chair in front of him protectively in time. 

Aegon flickered from view as the short blade sank into Tyrion's neck and for a too-long moment she realized she had been wrong, had seen something that was never there at all, longed to take what she had done back, but when she pulled the blade from the flesh, wine-red blood spurted from Tyrion's neck. His mismatched eyes fixed on her in horror as he rasped, choked, sputtered, stumbled back, hands grappling at his neck desperately, and she stared helplessly as he collapsed on the flagstone. 

* * *

She ought to have walked slower, but to do this with ceremony felt absurd. And yet as Sansa began to walk down the path lined with light, she felt her steps slowing, out of respect for this ancient place, out of respect for what she was about to do, and what Tormund was about to do.

Tormund and Davos stood beneath the heart tree at the end of the path; Gilly, Brienne, Podrick, and Sam were clustered around it, as well as Agneta and Ren and a few other free folk that she recognized but whose names she did not yet know. And all eyes were on her, and she took them in, and her heart began to ache with hope. Perhaps this had been the right choice after all. Jon's cloak was heavy on her shoulders and she fought the urge to pull it tighter around her. His embrace today was light but ever-present. Would this have mattered to him? Would he have been proud of her?

Somehow that was the worst thought of all. She would not want him to be proud, or happy, or complacent. She would want his anger, his jealousy. Was that selfish? So be it. She had loved him, she still loved him. He had become Prince Aemon, he had become Florian—perhaps he had always been these heroic fools. Perhaps she had always loved him; perhaps that burning moment that she had come to Castle Black had merely unearthed what had been growing all along.

Or perhaps she had built him up to these heroic fools. He had been just a man, mortal as any other.

But he was not here, now. He was gone, and he would never know what had become of her, would never know how she had so deeply loved him. He would be a heroic fool forever, a man nevermore.

Tormund was watching her every step and as she approached, she met his dark eyes again and a shiver rippled through her.

He looked different. His beard was shorter, his hair neater. He wore a more fine tunic, all dark leather. It looked almost new. These details did not escape her. She wondered if he had been advised on northern grooming, or if he had done it himself. She wondered if he had done it out of respect for the ceremony or out of respect for her. Still, he looked as fierce as ever, a god of war, and again she felt so small, so delicate, before him.

But he was not looking at her like she was delicate, breakable, and that only confused her more. There was warmth in his eyes, a low burning that set her skin aglow. The way he looked at her was almost...adversarial? No, that wasn't the word. She could not place the word that she needed.

With every step the tension within her grew ever more taut, until it was hard to breathe. Why was she nervous? They would not lay together. They had agreed on it. They would have this ceremony, they would feast, and that would be the end of it.

Tormund gave her a nearly imperceptible nod as she reached him and took her place before the godswood, before Davos, beside him. Their arms brushed and her heart leapt into her throat. Gods, but she was acting absurd. They would not lay together. They had agreed on it. Why was she thinking of it?

It was only natural, she supposed. Every one of her weddings had been accompanied by an awful, gnawing dread of the wedding night. But this did not feel quite like dread.

She would not think of it—

Oh.

Everything was all confused. Was it Jon or Tormund that she would not allow herself to think of? She did not know. The threads were all mixed up.

The ceremony began, with Davos saying the ancient words, but she heard none of them.

She only knew Tormund and only knew his presence beside her, and she did not know how she felt about that.

* * *

Dany fled the Tower of the Hand, and plunged into the grey darkness of the halls. At every pillar, Aegon awaited her, but when she tried to meet his eyes he faded, only to appear again, flickering and dark, at the next pillar. She could never reach him, so she ran faster, ran toward Aegon...

...But she was running toward her dragons. Dany halted, surrounded by darkness, and turned round.

She was alone in the darkened halls, alone with her pounding, bloody heart. Her hands shook.

That moment of clarity returned, bright as a star. The red door flashed before her eyes and she clapped a hand over her mouth. The burned carcass, the mayhem of the fighting pits, Aegon's blood in the snow, Tyrion crumpling like a doll on the flagstone...

She had done these things.

It had been her.

She had not cried in so very long—she could not have tears in her eyes; she needed fire in them when she faced her enemies—but where were her enemies?—and yet Dany sank to her knees and let out a single sob. The guilt was a rushing in her ears, so she got to her feet and turned from her dragons, and began to run.

But Aegon was waiting there for her, and yet as she reached him, his eyes turned from grey to violet to black, and the rot spread and snakes burst forth from them, and she screamed and turned from him and began running again...back toward her dragons, back toward her urges...Oh, but she had tried, she had tried to turn from them... She would be Queen of the Ashes or nothing, no one.

* * *

The blue made her hair look more like fire in the light of so many candles. Tormund fixed his eyes on the heart tree. He would not think of Jon, of the man who had paced, sleepless, so many nights haunted by a madness that had been sleeping within him for years and years, a hunger that he would die having never sated. His guilt pulsed in his veins, red hot as blood. He did not deserve this, and he did not deserve to want Sansa Stark, but—

But—

—His mouth watered for her. Here in the face of the Old Gods, lies were wrong and he had asked for honesty so he owed his own honesty to the gods, and gods he wanted her. There was nothing more lovely than a fierce woman, than a clever woman, than a strong woman. He knew the scars that crisscrossed up her lovely back, knew the fear she had to feel to walk this path, and yet she did it anyway, with a determined hope in her lovely eyes.

 _This is how a man ends it,_ he had once told Jon, and he saw that same arch courage in her.

"Now you are married before the gods," Davos was saying, and Tormund shook himself from his haze of desire. They would not lay together; they had agreed to it, and yet as Sansa glanced at him, sidelong, shyly, there was a stirring—did she—

He was old enough to know that look, but he still did not know quite how to read Sansa Stark, so he would not let himself believe such things. He knew how easy it was to see what you wanted to see; he knew how seductive it was for one's mind to turn quick, dispassionate glances into a stolen look.

He would not think of Sansa Stark.

He could not think of her.

"Aye, and now we feast!" he called, turning back to their audience. Sansa, to his surprise, slipped her hand into his, and gave it a squeeze. When he looked at her in surprise, she merely offered the slightest smile.

"If no kiss, then at least a touch. It is a wedding, after all," she explained in a low voice, and so he tightened his grip on her hand in return.

* * *

There was a pouring of people walking toward the courtyard, where they would feast. In the free folk, the northerners had finally found a people that were unafraid to dine outside in the cold with them, and by the time Tormund and Sansa had reached the courtyard, the ale was already flowing. Tormund released Sansa's hand; she felt slightly foolish for being so forward, and her heart had been in her throat the entire time they had been touching.

They had intended for it to be a quiet, staid affair; but Sansa could already see that the feast had become a celebration. And perhaps it was this, better than any speech or ceremony, that would cement the bond between their people.

"Let's eat. I could eat a horse," Tormund grunted, slapping his stomach, and the free folk around him laughed. Agneta smiled at Sansa and rolled her eyes; Sansa was grateful for the woman's kindness, her openness to forging a bond.

"I am hungry myself—" Sansa began politely, but then Ren was shoving a tankard of ale into her hands. "Oh, I don't like—"

"—DRINK!" he bellowed, and he slung his arms around Tormund and Davos and began leading them in a rousing and very lewd version of a well-known drinking song that had Podrick glowing red as the setting sun. Tormund sang loudest of all and Davos, with a wry and indulgent air, began singing along as well.

"I think ale is the only way they'll sound good, my lady," Agneta said grimly, and she took a long swig of her own ale.

There were no true tables; at least, none at which anyone could sit. The courtyard was packed with revelers milling around various spits, talking and drinking, and for a moment, Sansa felt left out. This was not the sort of wedding feast that she had once dreamt of, so long ago, when she had been a sweet child, starry-eyed from the songs—but there was certainly more joy to this feast than any she had seen in many, many years. She stood there, lost, for a moment, clutching her untouched tankard of ale and looking at the blur of bodies around her.

What would Jon have been like, here? He had never been outgoing; she could not help but picture him off to the side, in quiet discussion with a smaller group. And what might Arya, and Robb, and Bran, and Rickon have been like? What might her parents have been like?

"Not one for ale?"

Tormund's voice was low and made her spine prickle; Sansa shivered and turned to him. There was a high flush to his cheeks that men got when they had had a certain amount of ale in a short amount of time, and there was laughter in his eyes.

"I never did like it," she admitted. "I've always liked sweet wine better, but we can't get it, of course." She looked down at her full tankard. "I suppose I should try to like it." She risked a look up at him and he was peering at her, studying her. "What?" she pressed, cheeks flushing as though she were drunk.

"You looked very fierce, walking up to me, just now."

His smile had faded, his words held weight. "A warrior queen," he added, nodding to her.

"Don't patronize me."

"I'm not. Wouldn't dare," he promised. "Only a fierce warrior could make the dragon bitch back down."

"For now," Sansa retorted unhappily. A sudden gust of worries and anxieties took her, and she impulsively took a long swig of the ale.

"Aye, for now, and when she comes again we'll be ready." Tormund kept his voice low; he had to step closer, and his arm brushed hers. Gods but even in the open air there was simply not enough _space_ for the both of them. The ale was a punch to her jaw and she swayed slightly. She hadn't known ale could be so strong. Tormund was watching her, and his lips curved into a smirk as she wiped her mouth in a most unladylike manner.

"We'll be ready," she repeated, her voice raw. "But we haven't got dragons."

"No. But still I like our odds," Tormund countered, and when Sansa arched her brows at him, he mirrored the action, and something deep within her squirmed with warmth.

"Our odds?"

"We're both kissed by fire, Sansa." He was tugging on a lock of her hair; it happened too soon and she hadn't expected it, and the heel of his hand, large and calloused and warm, brushed her cheek. Thank the gods no one was looking at them; they would have seen her blushing like a maiden. "Red hair is lucky."

Just to hide her thoughts from him, she took another swig of ale.

"Kissed by fire," she mused. The tankard was considerably lighter, and she felt rather silly. "There is a joke about dragonfire in there, but I haven't the will to make it."

Tormund threw his head back and roared with laughter, and it was infectious: she found herself laughing, against her will, against all reason, and then they were laughing together, their eyes meeting with a sudden, fleeting awareness.

But they would not lay together—they had agreed on it, after all.

"More ale for Queen Sansa!" Ren had appeared out of nowhere and was taking the tankard from her; in a blur, he was shoving a full one back into her hand once more.

"I don't—"

"—Come on, you liked the first one well enough!"

She was gripped by a sudden, wild impulse, perhaps brought on by laughing with Tormund. She had forgotten what joy felt like. She wanted to feel joy.

"It isn't ladylike," she finally said, "to refuse a drink when you are offered one." And so she took a long swig of the ale, to many cheers and shouts, and felt a small flicker of pride when Tormund clapped Ren on the back and boomed, _"my wife!"_ above the cheers.

Who was she anymore?

Some of the free folk had gathered into a ring; Sansa distantly saw them dancing, one at a time taking the center and dancing to whoops and cheers as the circle around them kept time. Oh, but she had missed dancing...she had always loved it...

"Lady Sansa, let's see a dance! Everyone knows you were always the best dancer," one of the Mormont women was shouting, and somehow Sansa found herself stumbling into the middle of the ring, packed snow slippery beneath her boots, and the world was darkly lit by candles too-far away, and she felt too warm, and suddenly she was facing Tormund, breathless and swaying. Someone was playing a fiddle somewhere, and she heard drums, pounding in time with her own too-hot blood.

"Aye, teach us some southron dances, Queen Sansa!" That was unmistakably Ren's voice.

Perhaps if she had not had so much ale in such a very short amount of time, Sansa might have been too embarrassed; she might have begged off, might have distanced herself.

Tormund arched his brows at her. Almost challengingly.

Not challengingly. That wasn't the right word.

What was the word she was looking for? What was the word she needed, the word to describe how Tormund looked at her?

"Stop looking at me like that," she snapped. Did everyone have to be watching them right now? Yet had they been alone...

"Are you too craven to dance before a crowd?" he teased under his breath.

Perhaps if she had not had so much ale, Sansa might have simply laughed at his teasing.

But instead she danced.

She had not danced in years but she had not forgotten how. She felt Tormund staring at her, but it did not embarrass her—well, not entirely. At first she danced a traditional dance, one of the many proper dances for important young ladies that Septa Mordane had taught her, but she felt so fluid, so loose, so warm, that it morphed and twisted into something else. As she whirled, even Tormund was clapping in time with everyone else, and her heart had not been so full in so very long. At last, breathless, she came to a halt, and impulsively reached forward and snatched one of Tormund's large hands.

"This is my favorite," she yelled to him over the shouts and the music and the gaiety. "Just follow my lead."

Well, warriors had to have some grace, after all.

He surprised her—Tormund picked up the dance quickly, dark eyes following her form at every curve, making her flush yet giving her more joy for dance than she had had in so many years. It had been such a selfish pleasure to take such pride in how no one—not Arya, not Jeyne, not Myrcella, not any of them—could dance as well as she could. She had once come up with a dance to every song, a foolish little girl who knew nothing of the world alone in her room, moving every limb with the grace and mourning of a widow, the longing of a maid in love, the gravity of a queen. Once upon a time, every fiber of her being had been tugged on by every broken heart in the world like threads to a marionette, had reeled with the joy of every heart in the world, and it had made her want to dance, so now she danced once more with Tormund, all of her joy and brokenness in every movement, swift yet heavy, graceful but weighted. She was older now and the songs were not real but, somehow, as she danced with Tormund, she wondered if perhaps those singers and songwriters had never truly danced before, because there were no songs for this joy: the joy of a thousand eyes upon them, the heat of this strange warrior man's gaze upon her, the strength of his hands in hers...

But they would not lay together.

The circle around them scattered, as everyone began to dance or drink in smaller groups, and Sansa and Tormund came to a breathless halt.

* * *

So this was Sansa Stark. As pure and fierce and graceful as the driven snow yet as bright and giving and lucky as flame.

He let go of her slender, capable hands. Her hair was coming free of its braid. He had never seen her look quite so undone, quite so free. She withdrew, touching her hair self-consciously and averting her eyes, flushing.

"I forgot—I forgot how much I love dancing," she confessed breathlessly. "You're a good dancer."

His blood was pounding in his ears; he heard Ren approaching with a few of his friends. They were well-drunk, sloppily making their way to Tormund and Sansa.

"Aye, he's a good dancer, my queen, and a better lover," Ren informed her loudly. To her credit, Sansa arched her brows, unimpressed.

"Do you speak from experience, Ren?" she asked lightly, and Ren and his friends roared with laughter.

"He taught King Crow all that he knew!"

"Aye, Ygritte died a happy woman—" Ren halted suddenly, and Tormund longed to move, to hit Ren over his foolish head, but it was too late; the damage had been done. 

"Ygritte?" Sansa asked softly. 

Ren didn't speak; his friends sensed that they had wandered into somehow dangerous territory, and Tormund realized he would have to be the one to right this wrong. 

"Sansa," he began, taking his new wife's hand, "let's walk."  

 


	9. Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I took some time off of writing. 
> 
> Just an epilogue after this. 
> 
> Thank you very much to everyone for reading, commenting, and kudo-ing. I cherish every reader interaction.

Tormund led Sansa away from the others amid wolf whistles and cheers, as though this were a normal wedding feast—as though they were going to their first bedding.

But they would not lay together. They had agreed on it, after all.

His grip on her wrist was tight, and it ought to have scared Sansa, but instead it made heat and curiosity ripple along her skin. Of all the men she knew, his touch ought to have scared her the most—he was a warrior, a killer, a wildling. He was one of Nan's ghouls who had haunted her nightmares growing up—but some part of her was certain that, if she told him to, he would let go at once.

She decided to test it.

"Let go of me," she said quietly, the moment that had they moved out of the circle of golden light and into the blue shadow of night. They were approaching the crypts, she realized, but she did not know if this was Tormund's destination or if he had merely been pulling her away from everyone else. Tormund dropped her wrist instantly, and paused to look back at her.

She massaged her wrist as they regarded each other: trying to decide what they were to each other, trying to size each other up, to take the measure of one another now that they were married.

She was no sheltered lamb anymore, and he was no sworn protector—yet nor was he some cruel god of war and she his toy to be torn apart as it pleased him. This was different. She did not know what they were to each other—she did not know who held the power here. It kept changing, kept shifting beneath her feet. She had tasted this odd, uneasy balance at times with Jon, but never with anyone else. "Don't just grab me like that. I am not your doll."

Tormund's brow twitched as he studied her over his broad shoulder. At last, he turned away from her.

"Fine. Just follow me."

They reached the crypts. She hadn’t been down to the crypts since before she had asked Tormund to marry her, and at first she didn’t want to go down those stone steps. They paused at the entrance, side by side, and Tormund looked at her with a question in his eyes. Sansa could not help but think of Gendry, and of how he had sorrowfully tried to tell her that Jon was not down in the crypts—not truly.

Was Jon down there? She didn't know what she believed. If Jon's spirit was not within his own bones, then why had she fought so hard to bring his bones back to Winterfell? What did it matter, then, if his bones were not him?

"Why have you brought me here?"

“We need to talk about him,” Tormund admitted heavily, "if we're going to get any of this right."

There was no question of whom he spoke. _Him_.

Every 'him' would be Jon, forever, for Sansa. Every unused moment would be soon filled with Jon's ghost; a part of her would always have to stop her gaze from straying longingly to the pines and snow, seeking his familiar shadow. But a lump was forming in her throat; she did not know how to talk about him to Tormund, and she was afraid that every word she spoke would only leak the secrets of her heart to him, would give away the truths she had been trying to bury with Jon's bones.

Tormund took a torch from a brazier, and met her eyes once more. "Seems fitting that we speak here, where his bones lay."

They descended into the crypts, the silence swallowing them. Tormund walked ahead of her with a reverence to his steps that she rarely saw from him, and she was grateful for it. It was intentional. She knew that he was showing respect for her and for how she felt in this place of ghosts and grief and stone. It was how her mother and father had built their love. They had each carefully placed little moments of compromise around each other, little pieces of trust and kindness, until they had built something that would shelter them together.

This place was sacred to her—perhaps her brothers and sister were not down here, perhaps her parents were not down here, perhaps Jon was not down here, but their bones _meant_ something to her, and this place was one of the last in the world that remained unshadowed by her most terrible memories.

She had fought for Jon's bones. They were her triumph—however hollow that triumph was. It had been her most passionate and most painful fight—and she had fought so many passionate, painful fights. And Tormund seemed to know this, and understand this, about her.

Tormund stopped before each likeness, casting the torch over their faces to study them wordlessly. When he came to Jon's, he paused longest of all, staring up at the solemn stone face. She watched him carefully: watched how he breathed deeply, how his brows knit together. This wasn't easy for him, either, and for that alone she felt herself begin to relax. To look at Jon's likeness caused him pain, too.

She was not the only one in mourning for this man.

"So. You wanted to speak of Jon," she began, after they had each collected themselves, and after she had smoothed her mask once more. "I assume this is because of the mention of Ygritte?"

Tormund turned away from the statue to face her. Jon's likeness stood between them.

"Aye. I didn't want them to bring her up tonight, but it happened anyway, so we might as well speak of her—and of Jon—now." His eyes lingered on Sansa's hair, oddly. Sansa held up her palms.

"Then speak of them," she said briskly, as though to speak of Jon—and of the women he had loved—caused her no pain. This was not honesty but to be truthful about this... She was not certain she would even have the words.

Tormund did not speak at once: he studied her, dark blue eyes roving over her as though taking her apart, lie by lie, as though peeling away the mask she had just smoothed back into place.

"She was a warrior, a fierce one, and she loved Jon the moment she set her eyes on him. She was a girl kissed by fire, like you... Though you two couldn't have been more different," he added with a slight chuckle, shaking his head. "But you both got to him in a way no one else could, so I suppose there's that." He shifted. It was rare to see him weigh his words. "I think he loved her, so far as a boy as young and scared as him could. Far as I know, she was the first he ever lay with. He resisted her, at first. Maybe out of shyness, maybe out of a sense of duty to the crows...Or maybe something else."

Sansa's heart was breaking, to think of Jon young and scared and full of life. She would not think of him... and yet there was no other choice. She could not help but let herself sink into those dark, tumultuous thoughts which she had been battling for so long... "I'd slip him advice when I could, on women. On fucking."

Tormund's lips curved into a wry grin as he remembered something. "Gods knew the little crow needed all the help he could get."

Of course Jon had loved someone. She knew he had lay with Queen Daenerys; he had been just a man, after all. Of _course_ he had _loved_. Of course he had—of course he had _fucked_. It would be absurd to cry. Of _course_ he had been just a man. Why did he always become a god in her mind? Why did she need him to be a god, a prince, a knight of legends, a hero? Why was her heart breaking?

"So she was his first love—why does this matter?" she scoffed, choking through her agony. "I know Jon had lovers. It is none of my business; why should this matter to me? And why should this matter to us? Why should this matter _now_?"

"You know why it matters, Sansa." There was that adversarial look. He would not spare her; nor, she reminded herself, would he harm her. He stepped closer. "I asked you for honesty, and it's not just for me. I won't have Jon haunting our life together—it would dishonor him. So we might as well get it out in the open."

"Get what out in the open?" she asked roughly, wrenching the words from her soul. Tormund's look turned to one of sadness, briefly empathic and sorrowful.

"Your name was the last word he spoke. You were everything to Jon. Not Ygritte, not the dragon bitch— _you_. They'll talk of Ygritte and of the dragon bitch, but it was always you, Sansa."

She could not look away from Tormund as her eyes burned and her lungs tightened, robbing her of air.

"You're implying something. We—we were family, we were cousins but raised as siblings," she began to protest thickly, but Tormund scoffed, and placed a large hand on her shoulder, his gaze boring into hers, daring her to tell him to let go of her again, but she didn't want him to. His touch was an anchor as she reeled with grief.

Her name had been Jon's last word...

Oh, but it was a hopeless, tangled mess; her grief was a mire from which she would never escape.

"I knew it the moment you came to Castle Black," he continued in a low voice. He was too close, and the crypts were airless, and Jon was between them, stony and dead, and he would never come back, would never know that they had spoken of his last words, would never know what Tormund had known about him, would never know how he had redefined the world for Sansa, how he had made the world lovely again, how he had seemed Prince Aemon the Dragonknight to her, shining and golden and so strong, so good amid all of the evils of the world. "The way he looked at you, Sansa, you were never any sister to him, and I don't think he was ever a brother to you. You weren't family, not in that way. Maybe in another way."

"We were cousins," she whispered. "I never thought he..."

"He loved you," said Tormund bluntly, "and you loved him, and it's just another tragedy brought on by the dragon bitch that you could never tell each other that. Ygritte was a girl he loved as a boy, but you were who he loved as a man, and there's a difference, Sansa, and you knew it, and it's something between us that needed to be said. So say it."

"I can't." She pulled back but Tormund didn't let her go.

"Say it," he demanded. "Sansa, we are now friends in private, if nothing more. And we need to trust each other."

He could not know he had mirrored the words Jon had spoken to her. Sansa stopped trying to pull back.

_We need to trust each other._

Once upon a time, soft lips had brushed her forehead, gentle as snow. Once upon a time, Jon had pulled her close, and love, powerful and warm, had touched her for the first time in so many years. And now Tormund's warm, strong hand was on her shoulder, holding her close.

She clapped a hand over her mouth and reeled, as Tormund's hand steadied her. She covered her face as she let out a shuddering but dry sob.

How could she even find the words?

But this was a lie she told herself, for she had always had the words: she had been carrying the words close to her heart from the moment she had come to Castle Black, and sometimes she thought she had carried them all her life. They had been beneath her tongue, liquid and hidden, for years. They had been tangled in her hair, sewn into the seams of her dress. They had been crystallized on her lashes. She had been biting her lip to stop herself from murmuring the words for years.

"I _loved_ him," she said into her hands. "I _loved_ him so much. And I miss him so much."

"Aye, I'm sure you must. I know I miss him. Can't fathom how much you must."

The words began to pour out of her, there in the cold, deadened crypts. They tumbled from her lips, all of the secrets she had been keeping. She lowered her hands as Tormund's grip tightened, and she confessed all of it: how she had fallen in love the moment she had seen Jon standing on the parapet of Castle Black; how the months had gone by in a blur as she began to realize the depths of her own feelings; how she had been sick with longing as he'd been away on Dragonstone, and how it had felt to have him come back to Winterfell with a woman—a beautiful woman; a dangerous woman—on his arm.

She confessed how it had felt to know she could tell no one of the secrets of her heart and, yet, how it had felt that these secrets had been on display every time she had been caught in a room with the two of them. She confessed to how loving Jon had made her feel so safe in the beginning, and so terribly alone in the end. She confessed to how loving Jon had healed her ruined heart then ripped it apart all over again. She confessed to how sometimes she drew strength from his memory but mostly it wounded her, over and over again.

She confessed to how the world seemed pointless and empty without him in it but, towards the end, had seemed unbearable with him in it.

Jon would have taken her into his strong arms, and stroked her hair as she cried, perhaps kissed her brow as he had once done so gently, so lovingly. Gendry would have fled, overwhelmed by the burden of her emotions more deeply rooted than he could begin to handle. Petyr would have whispered poison in her ear, all the while thinking of how he might cut her later with the blade of her grief, when it suited him.

Tormund, she was realizing, was different from all of them too. All of the men she had loved.

He would not bend under the weight of her emotions, nor was he a cup for her to fill with her sorrow, with the horrors through which she had lived—nor did he see her pain as a weapon he might use in the future.

He was his own tree, growing alongside hers.

* * *

Drogon and Rhaegal were waiting for her in the dragonpit, and Daenerys flung herself toward Drogon, her face wet with tears. She had never felt so wretched; Tyrion's face kept flashing before her. She had killed the wrong man.

She should have killed Jorah, who had taken Aegon from her.

He had been convinced that Aegon had been about to kill her, for Aegon had turned to her in the final battle, fire in his eyes like the Targaryen he truly was—but that had not been anger, that had been love, she was certain of it. It had been passion. For Targaryen love burned and drew blood, and he was a Targaryen. His blood had been singing with the conquest just as hers had been; he had been turning to her with sword in hand not in anger but in desire, and Jorah—ever her false protector—had cut him down.

And then Aegon's army had turned on her, and she had had to flee on Drogon's back, away from her beloved, as that giant man with fiery hair had knelt over Aegon's body and roared with rage for her, rising up like a terrible god about to cut her down. Red, vibrant blood in the snow... The man that had been meant for her—after all, had their destinies not been aiming them toward each other for years and years and years?—had been felled by one of her own, and now he was gone, there was no bringing him back...

Daenerys climbed onto Drogon's back, and they took off north with Rhaegal, in the direction of her fears. She had always overcome her fears by conquering them, but as the air grew colder and the sky darkened, her certainty—the certainty that had carried her for so long, through so many horrors—began to ebb like scales falling from her, until soon she felt naked and helpless, a lost shivering wretched creature drenched by the clouds.

For when she had conquered the north—when she had conquered Sansa Stark—what would be left? As she flew over the nothingness that was the north she felt as though it were her future yawning before her, never-ending grey, boring days swarming with ghosts that blocked the sunlight from her life like clouds. This was not what she had wanted, not what she had been seeking, but it seemed she had been prodded and forced along this path, and now here she was: in the North, the air icy and the trees harsh and ugly.

Was this really where her destiny had been aiming her all along? Was her destiny to be buried beneath snow?

* * *

At last the final words slipped from her; Tormund knew all of her secrets now. Her eyes and heart ached, and her cheeks were raw with tears, and yet it felt as though she had been through some sort of illness, some illness that had nearly killed her, that was at last retreating.

She swallowed and met Tormund's eyes.

"Come," Tormund said at last. "They'll be missing us."

Hand in hand, they left the crypts. Sansa took one last look at Jon over her shoulder, but the torchlight was blocked by Tormund, and Jon was mostly in shadow.

Soon they were in the frosty air once more and they would be faced with their people, and they could not know she had been crying. She had to be strong for them. Tormund's hand was strong in hers, as they walked, their boots crunching in the snow, and his grip gave her strength.

But she still had to know. She still had to be certain. She had to hear the words one last time. She needed to close the book at last, to know the final word of the epilogue. She needed to hear the song to the very end.

"Wait," she whispered, and they paused. Tormund looked down at her, and briefly at their hands entwined. "Did he really—do you think he really—did he really _love_ me—"

"I know he loved you. The whole world knew it, Sansa. I think even the dragon bitch knew it. And you knew it, too." His eyes softened. "I know I am not the one you had in mind—"

"—But you are," she interrupted, and she fiercely wiped at her eyes with her free hand. "I've been betrothed to so many men, but I have never trusted any of them. I trust you completely, and I know we'll keep the North safe together. I don't want some prince garbed in samite; I want a man I can trust, a man who has the same goals that I do. I want a man who knows how to lead and who does not crave power. I want a man who understands me. I want a man who believes in me...and I think you believe in me."

"Aye, I do," Tormund replied gravely. The sincerity of his tone was what shook her: that, and the way his eyes lingered on her. He meant what he said and she could trust him. This was, she reminded herself, more than she had dared to hope for in so many years.

* * *

The wedding feast lasted into the night. Sansa and Tormund sat with their people, now intermingled forever, and drank ale and sat round the fires, unafraid of the cold. The raucous dancing died down, and soon those who remained were telling stories, arms slung across each other's shoulders, eyes misty and voices raw, as they all recalled the people they had loved and lost in these last few terrible years. Sometimes Sansa sat beside Tormund, but more often she moved about the little groups, getting to know their people anew, and Tormund watched her through the flames.

When he looked away from her, and looked at the shadowed corners of Winterfell, he did not find Jon's ghost waiting for him, and yet every breath of wind through the pines, every sting of a snowflake, was Jon to him. Would Jon have been happy with what he had done and said? He did not know. But he had to live now—it was what he had always chosen to do.

He did not know what awaited any of them; he did not know if Jon's spirit had been resting among his bones, there in the crypts, or twined about his likeness—or if Jon's spirit even remained here, in this world. He did not even know what he wanted to believe. It all seemed unfathomably sad. So, as always, he would choose to live now.

And he knew what he wanted to do. As he watched his new wife, he knew how he wanted to live. He watched her pause, feeling his gaze on her, and she glanced over her shoulder back at him in something like surprise. He could still see the ghost of their conversation in the crypts in her blue eyes; he could still see the confusion in her heart. He let his gaze linger, testing the waters between them. What would she think of his intentions? Would she even know how to read them?

He saw the change in her eyes: he saw the moment she realized he was looking at her with intentions, saw her lips part in the faintest hint of surprise... He tried not to smile at her innocence. He saw her shoulders rise and fall.

"Dragons!" cried one of their people—on second look, Tormund realized it was one of Sansa's, though he looked near one of the Free Folk for how mussed he was. "Two dragons are approaching Winterfell!"

Thoughts of desire were obliterated: Tormund got to his feet with Sansa beside him at once.

"Find every archer that's left," she addressed their people, looking to the remaining wedding guests around them, "and come to the battlements." There was no hint of fear in her voice; her skin was like steel as she turned to him. "Let's go," she commanded him, her blue eyes filled with ice.

Her mask was back on, and Tormund was not sure he had ever been quite so filled with need.

* * *

"Are you not afraid, Queen Sansa?" Agneta asked, her voice muffled as she pulled back on her tunic over her head. By the look of it, she and Gendry had been keeping each other entertained for the evening.

"No. She is alone—Daenerys prefers spectacle," Sansa explained as she walked with Agneta and Tormund up to the battlements. Sam was rushing to meet them, with Gilly and Edd in his wake. "If she's alone...I do not think she'll do anything."

"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing, a wise man once said," Sam told them, slightly breathless, as they met in the middle of the battlements.

The two dragons still made Sansa tense with fear, in spite of her words. It still seemed an impossible sight, though she had seen those dragons so very many times. It was near dawn now, and the dragons were still high enough that she could just barely make out the flash of the rising sun in the east on their scales, the briefest glimmers of gold in the charcoal sky.

They stood there in deathly silence, waiting for Daenerys once more. The dragons curved and soared, and then circled high above Winterfell.

Sansa would show no fear—but she took Tormund's hand in hers anyway.

* * *

All that she had done had been in search of a better world, only somewhere along the way, it had all gotten jumbled, and as Drogon and Rhaegal circled above Winterfell, she was abruptly taken back to a moment in time so many years ago: when she had been dressed to meet Drogo, to be presented to him for the very first time. She had only wanted to go home, then.

How she had changed—and yet, how she had not!

She had always thought she had evolved, had grown, had become greater, but now she felt that the years and pains and losses and wins had only been jewelry or masks which she had piled on top of that little girl, and now the icy wind of the north was stripping it all from her, and here she was again: helpless and homeless and, as she had always, always been, utterly alone. Nothing more than the bones and hair of a scared little girl; she was no dragon at all anymore.

Her anger had changed; she could have razed Winterfell below her with a single word to Drogon and Rhaegal, but the thought stirred nothing within her. She could only think that Aegon's bones were buried beneath all that stone, that this whole world had been shaped by the blood before her, and that the damnation and guilt of a thousand years, a dynasty of horrors, flowed in her veins, and that she had not been any different; that she had been merely another chapter in the bloody book. There was no turning back. If she looked back, she was lost, but if she looked forward, she was lost, too. There was nothing and no one left to her.

No one could ever love her, though she herself so often felt so filled with love that she did not know what to do with all of it. She had once dreamt of sunlit gardens and laughing children, of lemon trees and pretty maidens, of drowsily listening to music in warm, sweet-smelling grass, with her lover's head against her belly round with child. She had burned with love, love for the downtrodden and love for the neglected. She had burned with love for Aegon.

Everything she had done, every betrayal of every promise she had ever made, had been for love. And no one would ever understand it. They would call her the Dragon Queen, or worse, in hushed voices of horror and look upon the earth she had razed, the cities she had burned, the people she had killed, and they would not know that she had loved.

She turned from Winterfell.

On the ramparts, as Drogon made an arc, she saw two bright flames of hair, but she turned from Sansa Stark and Tormund Giantsbane and into shadow and cloud.

 _Goodbye_ , she whispered, knowing they were glad—as everyone always was—to see her leave. Always on the run, always unwelcome, always a beggar princess, but now she was finished.

Drogon let out a roar as they soared further north, and behind her Rhaegal screamed too. She wanted the warmth and sunshine of Essos, but something—perhaps the blood Aegon had shed here—called her further north. She belonged nowhere and the thought of ending it anywhere near where it had began only seemed to make it worse.

She did not want to end where she had started. She did not want to come full circle. She did not want to be who she had once been. She wanted to have been transformed, to be made better, brighter.

She began to shiver. They flew over the Wall, and the world beneath her grew ever more wild. She did not know what she was looking for until she found it, and she urged Drogon lower. Her tears froze on her face. Drogon landed in the snow, the ground splitting beneath him, and soon Rhaegal landed too. Daenerys slid off of his back. Snow seeped through her leathers to her skin but it did not matter; there was no need to protect herself now.

Her children screamed and begged to fly south, but Daenerys kept walking, chin high but bones shaking ever more, as she approached the heart tree. Her children followed her nevertheless.

There would be no quick death; no sweet ending of fire and blood. She sat beneath the enormous heart tree and looked up at the withering blood-red leaves, and waved for Drogon and Rhaegal to sit before her.

The sun rose, turning the snow gold. As the sky turned to molten rose, the snow began to fall, and she watched her children turn drowsy with cold and hunger, just as she was.

Death came slowly.

Things became confused.

One moment she was curled up in the snow, with her children circled around her like a funeral pyre—the next she was in a warm tent with Drogo once more—the next she was somewhere warm and lush, pulling Aegon along a breezeway dappled with panels of sunlight, watching him biting back a reluctant laugh.

But as she pulled him he turned to Jorah, then to Tyrion, then to Viserys—and then to Rhaegar, his armor filling with blood.

She screamed in horror and dropped his hand as he shed his armor like bloody scales, which clanged horribly on the paved ground, and he melted like a fountain of blood. She turned and ran—and the world changed again, and here she was again beneath the heart tree, facing Aegon. As she leaned in to kiss him, desperately, he disappeared like smoke and now there was a girl before her, with sad eyes and blue roses in her hair, a white gown stained with blood, and she looked like Aegon.

"I'm so sorry," the girl whispered, taking Daenerys' hands in hers. Her hands were cold, cold as death, and Daenerys felt sorry for her—she seemed too young to be so covered in blood, and so sad—so she kissed her cheek anyway, and held Aegon's mother close. "I'll stay with you," the girl said, and she pulled Daenerys into the snow, and they lay there.

The sky turned from rose to blue, blue as the roses in Aegon's mother's hair, and then to dusk, and as the sky began to fill with stars, the dragons roared for the last time, and Daenerys let her eyes close at last.

* * *

After watching Daenerys turn her dragons away from Winterfell, Sansa had retreated to her rooms. She had wanted—needed—to be alone, and at any rate, the Northerners and the Free Folk had needed to recover from their celebrations. The day had passed with most either asleep or lazily clearing Winterfell of the evening's festivities. Many of the Free Folk retreated to Castle Black, under the agreement that in a week's time, their people would reconvene to discuss the more practical issues that they faced.

And for the first time in years, Sansa had slept soundly, dreamlessly, as the world carried on briefly without her running it.

She woke once when Brienne and Gilly came to check on her; Brienne had ordered her to go back to sleep—"you need it, Lady Sansa," Brienne had said in no-nonsense terms—and Gilly had left soup and water by her bed and had added wood to the hearth, and Sansa had mumbled something and rolled over and slept some more.

She felt, once again, as though she had been through some sort of illness, and when she was awoken suddenly after dusk, she was more alert than she had been in years—albeit also rather scared. She sat up suddenly in the lavender darkness, wondering what had awoken her. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, and then she realized that a vase she had liked was shattered on the ground, and a very large, fur-bundled silhouette was crouching over it.

"Tormund?" she blurted in surprise.

" _Why_ would you bloody have a thing like _that_ there?" he wondered, straightening out of his crouch. "Why own _anything_ that would break so easily?"

"What are you doing?" She belatedly realized her windows were open, letting in frosty air. As her eyes continued to adjust, Tormund stepped into a panel of moonlight. He looked annoyed as he towered over her. There was snow melting on his shoulders and in his wild hair. He was slightly out of breath, perhaps from the climb up her tower.

" _Stealing_ you, woman," he admitted, almost an air of exasperation about him. "We married your way—now we'll marry my way."

Sansa was abruptly very aware of how tangled and wild her hair likely was, of how her nightdress was sliding off one shoulder—of how un-stealable she had to look right now. Tormund came to the end of her bed.

"What exactly does stealing entail?" She pulled up her nightdress to cover her shoulder once more, and watched Tormund's eyes follow the movement. He didn't outright answer her question but, with a look like that, he didn't exactly need to. She was not quite sure anyone had ever looked at her like that before. So openly hungry. Her skin prickled as though he had touched it. "I apologize for looking so undone," she stammered. "I-I'm just pulling my gown back on."

"Stealing doesn't entail that," he said with a nod toward her hand, as she paused in pulling her nightgown back on. "Other direction," he added.

He was towering over her bed. She should have been scared, and she was—wait, no, not _scared_. She had known fear in so many ways. This was not fear. But her belly was tight with something, and her heart was pounding. "If you want to," Tormund said suddenly.

"If I want to what?" She had forgotten the topic of conversation; his gaze on her shoulder was blazing and something made her pull her hand away and let her nightdress slip down her shoulder again. His warm gaze lingered on her skin, and he stepped closer, one heavy step that made the floorboards creak and made her heart leap into her throat. For a moment she had thought—hoped?—that he was going to  _do something._

"If you want to be stolen," he clarified grumpily, shifting. "If not, I'll go back. I've got a tent," he said with a jerk of his head in the direction of the window.

"Are you supposed to ask if I want to be stolen? Isn't the point to just take me?"

The words were out of her mouth before she had thought too much on them, and she didn't know if she regretted them or not.  _Just take me._  She watched Tormund briefly smirk.

"I always ask," he offered.

"That's not _stealing_ , then. That's—that's—that's just—"

"Dammit, woman, are you coming with me or not?" Tormund boomed suddenly, and Sansa shuddered. _Oh, gods_. If Brienne was lurking like usual—the woman was convinced that Sansa needed to be protected at all times—then she would hear, and everyone would know... It was so improper, and yet it was  _entirely_ proper. But they had agreed they would not lay together, but that had been different; that had been before he had held her in the crypts, before he had come here now, looking at her bare skin like  _that—_

"Yes. _Please._ "

The word was out before she'd thought on it, and she gulped as something in Tormund's gaze changed. "Um, yes. I will consent to you stealing me—" she was cut off as Tormund lunged and lifted her out of bed like she was nothing, and threw her over his shoulder. "—Wait! I can't go out like this—"

"I've got a cloak for you. We're not pausing so you can find your prettiest dress," Tormund informed her as he carried her to the window. "You're supposed to look like I caught you off-guard as I take you out the window." 

"We're going out that way?" she squeaked, breath still knocked from her. She was still flung over his shoulder, his large hand disturbingly high up her thighs. She could only see his back—and his arse, now that she thought on it. "Why not the door—"

"Do you always talk this much when you're being stolen?" he asked grumpily. "Calm yourself, woman. I've done this before."

"Well don't _tell_ me that," she complained, being jostled as something heavy that smelled of old pelts was tossed over her. "I don't want to _know_ about all the women you've stolen—"

"Are you jealous?" Suddenly they were in the open air, and Tormund was climbing a bloody rope down the side of the keep, and Winterfell's courtyard was swinging before her as she clung to his back.

"No—" she gasped, clinging to Tormund as he dropped the last few feet, and her forehead smacked into his back.

"Not a very convincing _no_. You hesitated," he mused smugly, somewhat breathlessly, as he carried her through the dark courtyard.

"Only because I was busy trying not to fall to my death!"

They came to the stables, where two horses were saddled, and Tormund at last let her down. It took a moment for her to regain her bearings, and his strong hand righted her as she got her balance again. Thick boots and heavy cloaks were neatly folded for her beside the horses—Tormund had planned this carefully.

"Where are we going?"

"You're a stolen woman—you don't get to ask the questions," Tormund informed her, reaching down and picking up the pelts and boots. He turned to Sansa once more, holding them. In the darkness, their breaths clouded in the air. "Last chance to say no," he said quietly. "And I'll not judge you for it, or resent you for it."

The frosty air was making her shake with cold, but for a moment Sansa could not choose. To walk willingly where Tormund was about to lead her... She had not done it before. Not really. The closest she had come was with Gendry, but...

She took the boots and cloaks from Tormund, watched his eyes change. Their hands brushed and her skin prickled all over all over again.

"Does anyone else know about this?" she asked, looking down at the boots. They were wildling-made boots.

"Aye. They all do. Least, they all know I planned to try." He scoffed. "I know how to be turned down, too, Sansa. I'm not afraid of that, either."

Tormund, she decided, was the bravest man she knew.

"I want to go," she said at last.

* * *

"Follow me," Tormund coaxed the horse.

Less steady beside him, Sansa tugged at the reins as her horse picked its way over snow-covered branches, through matted, bristled bramble. The wood was silent with snow, the trees black. The only sound was that of their horses, crunching through the snowy ground, and Sansa's rare gasp as she attempted to navigate. She was terribly out of practice. She had not been so fond of horseback riding when she was younger, and she did not have to do it much anymore. "Here it is," Tormund said at last.

They had come to a cave wreathed in pines that were bent over from the snow. Its mouth yawned in darkness. Sansa felt a prickle of fear, but Tormund continued on like this place was home. They dropped off their horses and led them inside the darkened cave. "Leave the horses here, there's a rock to tie them," Tormund instructed.

The air was humid and warmer than she expected. She tied her horse next to Tormund's. There was a pile of kindling by the mouth of the cave; he must have been here recently. He really had planned this, then. While she had been sleeping, he had been planning. It was a refreshing change of pace—to not be the only one making plans, thinking of the future.

In a matter of moments, Tormund had lit a fire, and he carried the kindling and Sansa picked up some for herself, and they walked along in quiet deeper into the cave. The path was surprisingly smooth, and the torchlight flickered, casting shapes along the walls of the cave, but she realized that she was not afraid—not with Tormund here. "Not long now," he promised. The air was getting warmer, almost oppressively so, and Sansa heard the rush of water. "Hot springs," she realized, as they came to a steaming pool, and she felt her hair curling in the humidity.

Tormund was lodging his torch into a crevice of rock, and then unlacing his boots. "What are you doing?"

"Going in," he said with a laugh. "What else would I do? You said you wanted to be more like a woman of the Free Folk—here's a starting place."

"B-but—" she sputtered, as he began shedding his furs. "We couldn't possibly—"

"Yes, we could, and we can—and I will. You do what you want, my lady wife," he said with heavy irony, and then suddenly he was bare from the waist up, his magnificent body paneled in gold, and Sansa looked away hastily as she heard him beginning to unlace his trousers. _Oh gods,_ she thought in shock that was not quite horror-tinged enough for her own sanity's sake. Then she heard a splash. Sansa defiantly looked at Tormund as he breached the surface, wild hair now plastered to his head. He was laughing at her again, and she scowled.

"Yes, I did say I wanted to be more like a woman of the Free Folk, but this is simply going too far," she snapped. "I thought you were going to steal me and—and—well,  _you know._ " 

"Oh, didn't take you for a craven, lady wife," he shot back. "Afraid of getting your lovely hair wet?"

"I didn't know you thought my hair was lovely," she parried archly, hands on her hips. Tormund let out another laugh.

"Of course I do. It's like mine!" Tormund said, and then he dropped beneath the surface and then burst up again, standing up so that he was naked before her, and Sansa let out a shriek and turned away, covering her eyes. "Oh my gods," she hissed. 

"Afraid to look?" Tormund asked archly.

"No, I'm not afraid—I'm just polite."

"Well, I'm not." She heard more splashing—he was coming toward her. _Oh, gods._ Furiously, Sansa dropped her hands and then so carefully, with tight, measured movements, looked to meet Tormund's eyes, resisting the almost ridiculous urge to drop her gaze and see just what he looked like—

"Yes, I am well-aware," she said dryly. She crossed her arms over her chest as he walked toward her, smirking, dripping wet. "I know you did ask to steal me before you stole me, which was a step in the right direction, but this—this would be enough to have your head, just so you know," she sniffed.

"Oh, you want my head?" Tormund asked, and she narrowed her eyes as he laughed at his own joke.

"No, I do not," she said stiffly.

"Oh, but you do," he argued, and then suddenly he was standing before her. "Your act might work on a boy, Sansa, but I'm a man."

"Yes, and a hairy one at that," she blurted out, for as he came closer, she was keenly aware that his chest—his hard chest, thick with hair and hard with muscle—was eye-level with her. She had to crane her neck to look up at him. "I don't see what you being a man has to do with it," she added coldly.

"I'm a man, and I've been with many women. I know what it looks like when a woman wants me," he explained.

"Oh, how modest of you," she seethed. "Since when do I want you?"

"Since you can barely look at me without blushing like a girl. Since your pretty blue eyes look almost black when you look at me," Tormund said, and he lowered his voice. "Since you said, _please_ , in your room like you did tonight." Suddenly the air of joking, of joviality, was gone, and he took her chin in his strong hand. She felt warm water drip down her neck, seeping into her collar of her dress and then a trail of heat between her breasts. "Let me show you how a man loves." She swallowed, and inexplicably her eyes began to burn.

"Loves?" she prompted, her voice barely a choke. She thought of Jon, thought of taking his hand in hers, thought of his lips grazing her forehead. That was how a man loved.

"Aye, how a man loves." He let go of her chin, and then stepped back, his eyes never leaving hers. "It is no easy thing, to let yourself be loved," he said gently. She felt like crying. And then she felt tears slipping down her cheeks, but she did not feel ashamed, and she did not move to wipe them away. "I saw your back, Sansa. You're no fragile maid. You can let yourself be loved. I've seen you do it, too. I know you can." He blurred before her and she blinked, scrunching her eyes shut, and she heard a splash again. Tormund breached the surface once more and shook his head with a wild roar of a laugh. Her lips twitched irresistibly.

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to smile. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to be loved.

"D-don't look," she stammered, looking down and shedding her heavy cloak.

"Aye, this time I won't," Tormund agreed, and she heard the telltale splash of him moving in the water. His easy agreement made her fingers tremble, but they only worked faster, too. "Unless you want to be undressed," she heard him wonder aloud. "Though I don't reckon your pretty little nightdress will fare the better for it." As she undid the lacing of her dress, she could not help but imagine his large, strong hands pulling at the lacing, impatiently ripping it apart. Yet alongside that image were all of the memories of Ramsay—no, then they were blending—no, then they were separating—it was all a jumble of desire and shame.

Why was this so much harder than it was with Gendry? This was not furtive. This was not quick and stolen. This was, she realized, nothing she could shame herself for. There was nothing twisted or complicated or sad about this, and somehow, that made it all the harder.

Because she realized, as she let go of her dress and it dropped to the floor of the cavern in a _fwump_ of fabric, that she had been holding on to every sad thing in her mind, every sad thing that had ever happened to her, for so long now.

It was her penance, it was her burden, and it was how she justified her continued existence—an existence that was so harrowed and marred, an existence that, however painful and miserable, she did not feel she deserved.

There would be nothing sad or twisted or partly wrong about slipping into this warm water with Tormund. Every part of this was something she had agreed to; he had asked her what she wanted at every turn, had asked her for her heart at every turn, and she had handed it to him each time, a bloody, broken ticket to a future completely different from and yet exactly what she had always prayed for and imagined.

She undid her boots, and her underthings, and then she was naked but she was not cold, and Tormund was still turned away from her, his broad, strong back to her. She felt her jaw tremble as she watched him push his hair back and water ran in rivulets along his scarred skin, watched him tread water. He too had been through horrors, over and over again, but here he was, laughing and dancing and loving anyway.

The first step into the water was a shock and she gasped at the heat.

"O-oh g-gods," she gasped, and she heard Tormund laugh again.

"Keep walking," he said gently. "Ease into it—but don't stop, either."

The ground was jagged and uneven; she was picking her way, more aware of her body—and all of its many, many flaws—than she had ever been. When she was knee-deep in the water, she paused.

She knew what she had to do.

But how to do it?

She couldn't make her mouth form the words. She couldn't make herself speak. "Keep going," Tormund said again, and she exhaled. She scrunched her eyes shut.

"Look at me," she whispered. "I think you need to look at me."

* * *

Tormund turned to face her and rose from the water, which lapped at his stomach. In the flickering torchlight, Sansa held her chin high and her shoulders back, but her eyes were bright and he could see her breathing rapidly, her jaw clenched tight. He watched her flex her fingers, watched her tense her slender, pale legs.

He'd seen Gendry looking at her like they'd fucked, but he knew that choices made in the dark and in secret, never voiced, were not the same as choices made out loud. He also knew that _wanting_ and _needing_ were two different things. They'd needed to get married—they didn't need to do this. She'd needed to do what he was certain she'd done with Gendry—she didn't need to do this. He was fairly certain she wanted to do this, but he was also fairly certain she'd never been asked what she wanted. At least not in a long while.

He hadn't, either.

It came with being a leader. Everyone assumed that you did as you wished, and perhaps it was partly true—he wished to be a good leader, and so he did what needed to be done—but that was different from the quieter wants, the more personal wants. He had wanted to spend more time with his daughters, watch them grow from children into the warriors they were now. He had wanted to watch Jon grow old. He had wanted so many things, but no one had ever asked.

"Do you want to come in the water?"

"I—" her voice caught in her throat. He heard her swallow. "Yes." She was flexing her fingers again, and he watched her capable pale fingers curl and uncurl. He had seen so many women, and was old enough to be drawn to places different than he'd been as a younger man. He could not stop staring at her lovely fingers, could not help but think of the scars on her back. "I feel like I shouldn't want to," she confessed suddenly.

"You're just like Jon," Tormund scoffed. "So damn good at finding things to feel bad about. Get in the water, woman. I want you here."

She let out a reluctant laugh, one that sounded wet, and then he watched her bite her lip and begin wading. He was old enough to not be solely hypnotized by what he'd been as a younger man, yes, but she was still lovely and he was more than sorry to see her breasts disappear beneath the dark water. Her hair pooled along the surface like curls of flame, and then she was gasping and laughing before him. "Gods," she laughed, looking almost confused, and he saw a flash of the woman he had seen dancing. She was clumsy for once, not a natural swimmer as she was a natural dancer.

"I'll hold you up," he offered, holding his hands above the water, and she took them, and the water around them stilled. Her eyelashes were stuck together and her hair was beginning to curl damply around her hairline where the steam kissed it.

* * *

Tormund's grip was strong on her hands as he pulled her toward the center, where the balls of her feet barely slipped along the rocky bottom. "So what did you teach Jon?" she braved the question that had been lingering all evening. She hated how taut her voice was. "They said you taught him all that you knew," she added. Tormund looked like he was trying not to laugh at her.

"It'll take all night to get through it all, and you're weary," he said dismissively.

"Oh, all night?" she snarked, and watched Tormund laugh. His laugh echoed throughout the cavern. So rocky and wild a place had never felt so much like a home.

"Aye, all night, and all of the next day, too. There's hardly time," he warned her.

"Well, if you keep talking, there won't be," she said sweetly, and then he pulled her closer so that she lost her footing and had to cling to him as he kissed her roughly, his chest hard against her breasts, and one hand was on the back of her head and the other was on her back, pinning her to him, palm flattened against the worst of her scars in a touch so filled with need that her back was on fire once more but in a new way; in a way that made her grateful—in a way she did not have the ability to understand in this moment—for her scars, and for the fact that he knew of them.

His kiss was surprisingly tender, and she leaned in to make him more forceful, but Tormund pulled back from her teasingly, his teeth grazing her lip. "What?" she asked breathlessly, as he waded backward.

"Is this a race?" he teased. Sansa flushed. With Gendry—the only man with whom she had ever shared her body in a way that was not violent, in a way that she had chosen—it had been rough, unspoken, heedless and frantic.

"It should be passionate," Sansa countered, feeling silly and childish as Tormund tended to make her feel.

"That doesn't mean it should be fast."

"Is this how a man loves? With kisses and pulling back?"

"Aye, a man doesn't touch a woman til she's dying for him...Til she's wetter than this cave for him," Tormund said. Sansa felt a tingle between her legs and scowled at him.

"And exactly how do you propose to get me ...wetter than a cave... if you won't touch me?" she argued, stumbling over the blunt words, but Tormund was wading in circles around her.

"I can think of a few ways," he growled behind her ear, and Sansa stood ramrod straight. "How do you want to be touched?" He paused behind her, and Sansa stared blankly at the cavern wall.

She didn't know.

It had been instinctive with Gendry, and with Jon...oh, but she had always thought of tender, helpless kisses...

"Like you'd come for me, no matter what, if I were in trouble," she said thickly, her eyes burning with tears. "Like you'd spent years longing for me. Like all of the things I've done wrong didn't matter to you, like you would love me anyway." She paused, mastering herself. "How do you want to be touched?"

"Like all of the things I've done wrong didn't matter to you," Tormund said in a low voice. "No, that's not quite it—like all of the things I've done wrong—like you knew why I did them."

"Yes, that's it," she breathed, and then his hands were on her back again, strong fingers tracing her scars. "I've done so many things—"

"—So've I. You think I feel bad about none of them?" His fingers were still on her back, tracing along each scar. "You think I have no regrets? You think Jon had no regrets, no things that shamed him in the dark of the night, no things he would do anything, give anything to take back?"

"I don't know how to forgive myself."

"I don't, either. But I live anyway." She turned to him, faced his scars. She tentatively traced her fingertips over one large one along his chest, felt him shudder slightly beneath her touch. "You touch like a maid," he laughed.

"I feel as though I am," she confessed, still not meeting his eyes. "This seems so...personal. With Gendry...it was about everyone _except_ us, I think."

"Sometimes that's how it ought to be," Tormund agreed. "Sometimes it should be like that. Rough, impersonal, in the dark. Sometimes it needs to be about something or someone else."

"Sex is a god of many faces," Sansa whispered. She'd intended for it to be a joke but she couldn't make it come out like one, but Tormund laughed anyway.

"Aye, it is, and you should know all of them." He was kissing her again, tenderly, and Sansa closed her eyes and let herself be kissed. She felt his hardness brush against her stomach but it did not scare her. This was so different, so personal, and at first it had seemed more scary but now it seemed warmer, safer. Like falling in love was no different from dozing off on a summer's day, lazy and slow and secure, the world around you sweet-smelling and lovely, gilded with magic and promise. He kissed along her neck, making her skin prickle as his beard tickled her skin, and she found herself laughing again as she gripped his shoulders. She wanted him. She gripped his hair and pulled him back so she could kiss him, a clumsy, wet kiss that made them both laugh. Tormund gripped her waist and then her hips, and she ground against him and felt him growl against her. She bit her lip and reached down and moved her hand along his length, but he pulled her hand away. "Not a race," he whispered huskily in her ear, guiding her out of the water. She lay down on the pile of their clothes behind them and he knelt between her legs, dripping wet, large hands on her knees. And then he was kissing her between her legs, long slow kisses that made her knees shake and made it hard to breathe.

She almost wanted to cringe away from his mouth in shame—was that part of her not the worst of her, the least worthy of being kissed?—but she forgot the thought as she stared up at the ceiling of the cave dizzily, got lost in the sensation, wound her fingers in his hair and then, when he slipped a finger inside of her, gripped his hair and pulled with a gasp. His beard was coarse against the soft flesh of her thighs and it was almost painful but she forgot that part, too, as that familiar feeling began to coil tighter and tighter, wrapping round her like a lover's embrace. Her release washed over her like the water from the spring, almost too much, and she trembled against Tormund's mouth and around his finger.

"I want you," she whispered, and then he was inside of her.

"Aye, I want you too," he gasped.

The rocks were digging into her back, and just as she had the thought that it was almost painful, he pulled away and picked her up, and then they were in the water once more, her legs wrapped around his hips, as he slipped inside of her again, and they clung to each other, moving with each other slowly, almost lazily. His large hands were gripping her hips and holding her up, and she wrapped her arms round his neck and held his gaze as they moved together. "Sansa," he grit out, and buried his face in the crook of her neck and kissed her there, and her release came once more as his did.

For a moment all was quiet as they clung to each other in the waters, gasping against each other's wet skin.

"Hardly all night," she remarked into his ear, and he laughed against her neck.

"You've a long night ahead of you," he growled against her skin, and he gripped her hips almost painfully tightly.

"I slept enough anyway," she whispered, and let out a shriek of laughter when his teeth grazed her shoulder just short of being painful.

* * *

She did not know if it was day or night. Later—many hours later, breathless and already sore—they lay together on their cloaks beside the water, their legs tangled. "Perhaps we'll have a child," Sansa said, half-asleep, into Tormund's chest. She felt laughter rumble in his chest.

"We'll have seven."

"How do you know?" she demanded—or at least, she meant to make it sound like a demand, but was stifled by a yawn. She had never been so physically exhausted in her life.

Seven...her parents had had seven children—at least, if you counted Jon and Theon, and she was not sure if it was right to count Jon or not. What did it make her if she did count him, and what did it make her if she didn't?

"Red hair is lucky. So is the number seven." Tormund sounded on the verge of sleep already.

"Yes, and we're lucky," she realized, drowsily.

"Aye, we are."

 


	10. Epilogue: Doors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I finish a WIP, I'm utterly shocked. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone for sticking with this crackship fic! This was a joy to write.

 

_"The ghosts that we knew will flicker from view_   
_And we'll live a long life"_

* * *

 

Sansa groaned and attempted to roll over—and failed twice. Righteous rage coursed through her when she heard her husband's sleepy, throaty chuckle at her struggle.

"Yes, _ha ha,_ laugh all you want," she hissed, flushed and frazzled when she finally did flop over at last to face her husband. His face was half-hidden by the plush pillows and furs draped around them but his gingery hair, wild as ever, stuck out enough for her to see him. Their fifth child, Ygritte, was curled up between them, her wild curly red hair splayed against Tormund's darker, ginger beard.

For a moment, Sansa studied the silvery hairs glinting in her husband's beard. He was as hale as he had been eleven years ago when they'd married, but every now and then she caught signs that time was passing—as if raising six children (soon to be seven) was not enough to remind her, constantly, of the passage of time.

"My fat wife," Tormund chuckled sleepily, and Sansa reached out to smack his arm, but thought better of it when she saw her daughter's eyelids flutter. Ygritte was already temperamental, and Sansa was loath to encourage that streak any further than Tormund already encouraged it.

A kick drew her gaze from her husband and back to her unwieldy belly. Sansa stared down at it helplessly. So many years ago, Tormund had predicted they'd have seven children, and she'd not believed him.

She still didn't quite believe him. Even now, she was cautious and miserly with her joy, rationing it out each day and trying to savor each morsel like it was the last of the bread, always under the assumption that there wouldn't be any more to come. Tormund told her that the way she lived was exhausting: always preparing, always hedging her bets, always trying to see four or five moves ahead. For the two children they had lost, she had thought she would be prepared, had thought she had learned how to navigate grief—but it turned out that all that planning for misery had not staved off the grief. It was just as cruel, just as cold, as the grief she still felt for Jon.

Even now she was still afraid. Those first years of their marriage had been in winter, and the winter had been a hard one. Their food stores had run low—deadly low—and they'd had to share what she'd set aside just for their family when their people had begun to go hungry.

By the time spring had emerged, wary and skittish, she had felt she'd aged ten years. Her hair had grown thin and dull, and even Tormund had begun to look weak. It had taken a few years to recover from that winter. Sometimes she felt she would never quite recover from the physical toll it had taken. Their oldest, Jon, had been born during the hardest part of that winter, and he took after his namesake in his seriousness, his solemn nature. He had been born a winter's child, born amid grief and hunger and fear. His first laugh had been a shock in the otherwise quiet, hungry halls of Winterfell—

—and then Tormund had roared with laughter at the sound, and the torches had seemed to burn a little brighter, and for a moment, they'd all felt a little less hungry. But the joy had thinned quickly, for it was hard to laugh when you were that hungry, and Jon had been born hungry.

"Not too much longer now," she said, smoothing a hand over her belly. _Only a few moons left._

"It's a boy, I tell you," Tormund muttered, shifting and slinging an arm across both her and Ygritte, pulling them closer. Little Ygritte mumbled some noise of half-protest and then curled into Sansa's side. Sansa pulled her close, and looked at Tormund.

She looked back at her belly, touched it, felt the life there.

"You know I don't like to guess ahead of time," she whispered.

She didn't like to assume things would go right. She didn't like to bank on happiness—even though she was filled to bursting with it. Old habits died hard, after all. Tormund, wise as always, had once warned her that overcoming all that she had before their marriage would not be the only pain in her life, and he had been right. Life did not become easier after you won a war; the gates of paradise did not suddenly open up. She had thought that she had been finished with grief but life, its odd, caravan-like journey, had had her losing her grief and finding it again, like a lost toy, over and over again on her journey, her feet covered in blisters and her legs and back aching from pain and her eyes stunned into stars from all the beauty and wonder that she had seen. 

When she thought about the time that had passed since the war, that period in King's Landing seemed oddly small and distant—and yet some things could bring it back suddenly, and unexpectedly, like the golden taste of Dornish wine, or a flicker of sunlight in a particular pattern. She would be eleven once again, under Cersei and Joffrey's thumb once again, transported back to a time when everything had been both beautiful and terrible.

And then Tormund would set his hand on her arm and shake her out of it, knowing she had been abruptly thrown back into the past. She did the same for him; they both had been through so many things, had lived so many different lives, been so very many different people.

Memory fascinated her. Random, meaningless moments from her life could come back to her, crisp and vibrant and wetly real as an apple slice—yet sometimes it took her moments, long ones, to piece together Jon's face, the sound of his voice, the feel of his lips ghosting over her forehead. If he was not in the crypts with his bones, if he was not lingering in the shadows of the pines, if he was not locked, safe and sound, in her memory—then where was he?

"Mother?"

Jon was at the door. He took after her Tully looks, tall and slender with dark auburn hair and sea-blue eyes that could drown you like the ocean. He walked on silent feet, quick and clever. Sansa sat up, and Tormund was alert at once, a warrior forever, though not as quick to sit up. Jon fidgeted in the doorway, his Tully blue gaze lingering on his little sister. "There's been a raven. From King's Landing. Maester Sam asked me to give it to you."

"That'll be Gendry," Tormund grunted, and flopped back into the pillows. Even though it would have been proper, Tormund still didn't call Gendry "the king" and neither did Sansa—nor did anyone in their family. Gendry was not their king, but he was their friend. "Can't be important if Sam didn't bring it himself."

Jon slipped into their room and handed Sansa the scroll. She unfurled it scanned it quickly.

"He's looking for Daenerys' remains," she blurted in surprise.

Ygritte, who had been fascinated by the tales of the dragon queen from her earliest days, popped up between them.

"Daenerys?" Her little musical voice struggled with the complicated name.

"She was last sighted when she flew north of the Wall—the day of our marriage," Sansa read aloud. "Gendry wants to honor her remains..." She looked away from the scroll.

"I don't," Tormund said bluntly. "And I know you don't, either."

"What if there's dragons still?" Ygritte asked, crawling over Sansa's legs to get to Jon, who was most likely to indulge her longing for dragons. Jon scoffed.

"They died with her, little sister," he insisted, mussing her hair. "There are no more dragons."

Jon's gaze flicked to her almost challengingly. He knew the stories of his namesake—all of them—and he knew Jon had been part Targaryen. When he'd been old enough, Sansa had walked her eldest son down to the crypts, and had stood before Jon's likeness, and told him all of it.

Well, almost all of it.

There were some parts she saved for herself—and, come to think of it, for Tormund—for once upon a time she had told him everything about Jon in the very same place.

"Good riddance," Tormund grumbled. But Sansa sat forward and kicked away the furs.

"I'll do it," she said, and Ygritte let out a squeal.

"I'll go too, mummy!"

Tormund sat up.

"No, you won't, brat," he said, yanking Ygritte away from the edge of the bed by the collar of her tunic.

Sansa looked back at her husband, and for a moment it was as though they were alone in the room. His hair was even more wild from sleep, but his eyes were dark and serious. "Why do you want to do this, woman?"

It was an honest question, and they had promised each other honesty. Sansa looked back down at Gendry's scroll. It was rare for the king to hand-write his own scrolls—he was still learning his letters, and he hardly had the patience for it—but this one had been handwritten. She knew the emotion that had formed every clumsy letter, but even she—so well-read, so educated, so eloquent when she had to be—could not name it. She thought of Daenerys and a lump formed in her throat. Her eyes began to burn. Tormund perceived all the little signs of her grief, and nodded, once. "We'll do it together, then," he said.

There was, inevitably, a commotion—all of their children wanted to come, but only Jon was old enough to ride on his own and to ride for more than a day.

Gilly, almost a maester now, and Sam, an unofficial maester, both urged her against it. She was too pregnant, too fragile—they wouldn't say it outright, but she wasn't as young as she had been, and every pregnancy was more dangerous than the last, as time went by.

She went anyway, in the end.

* * *

 

On white horses, Sansa and her husband and son left Winterfell and ventured north.

It was summer now and they didn't hit the snow for days, not until they reached the Wall. Jon had seen the Wall and she watched her son take it in again as they passed through Castle Black, still manned by Ren and Agneta (though Agneta was, as far as she knew, on a visit to King's Landing. She and Gendry were still good friends, though their romance had ended when he had chosen to ascend the throne).

The snow beyond the Wall was sparkling white. Loaded with provisions and with the rumors of where Daenerys had been seen last, they went further and further north. The journey was quiet—Jon was not a talkative child, and the purpose of this journey had silenced her husband. Sansa, for herself, was grateful for the silence. She needed the quiet. This was no trivial errand. The child within her tired her sooner than she might have tired in the past, and they stopped frequently and made camp earlier than Tormund and Jon might have without her.

But they did not stop, and they did not turn back.

As they rode further north, searching and wandering, wondering how they might possibly find the remains of the dragon queen and her children, Sansa contemplated Daenerys, the woman who had shaped Sansa's life, and the lives of everyone she had ever known, with fire and blood.

Though the north had belonged to Jon, this place—empty and frozen and pure white—seemed to belong to the woman that had taken so much from Sansa, so much from Westeros.

Time had changed how Sansa had felt about Daenerys so many times, just as time had changed Sansa so many times. In the deepest hell of Winter, when she had thought she might die of hunger, her hatred for Daenerys had turned hard and brittle as a poorly-forged spear. Then the snows had melted and her children had been born and it had changed again, into hatred for a world that was capable of creating someone like Daenerys Targaryen, queen of the ashes and mother of dragons, and had manifested in a determination to protect her children and to protect all children. She had blamed the world, blamed power, blamed greed, blamed men. She had felt she'd gained perspective on Daenerys, felt she had seen her as a victim of circumstances and of heritage, of a bloodline that could only end in violence. She had seen a trembling wisp of a girl crouching, alone and terrified, behind the greatest power the world had ever seen.

And yet as she traveled ever more north, it changed again, and what she felt was no longer pity or disgust, but empathy and, oddly, grief. Grief for all that Daenerys had hunted, and all that she had destroyed within herself. All that Daenerys could have been. She was not so different from Jon, not really. Like Jon, she had merely wanted to go home—to have a home, to be loved, and to love. And that want had turned within her, and where it had made Jon kinder, it had only made Daenerys darker. She was not so different from Sansa, either, and that part was the thing that sometimes terrified Sansa, one of so many things that had haunted the halls of Winterfell for Sansa in the depth of Winter, and yet it was the same thing that made her breathe more deeply now. In this place that seemed so barren of living things, Sansa had never felt more connected to every living being than she did now.

Was what Daenerys had done her own fault, or the fault of the world? Perhaps it was both. Sansa had once thought we were our choices, back when she had still thought Joffrey kind. Then, trapped with Ramsay, she thought we were our circumstances, powerless and malleable beneath the blade of the cruel and unknowable gods.

And yet as she watched her son and husband ride ahead of her, scanning the horizon for the last of Daenerys and her dragons, she thought of all the people who had loved Daenerys and all the people whom Daenerys had loved, and all of the people who had loved Jon and all of the people whom Jon had loved, and she decided that we were measured by those who had loved us, and those we had loved, and this was our deepest tragedy and our greatest romance.

They found the dragon bones days later, near the Frostfangs, under a heart tree. Half-buried under snow and smoothed over by time, Daenerys' children had been waiting. Sansa dismounted her horse and watched her son slip off his, and stare into the hollow eyes of the final dragon skull.

She didn't realize she was crying until she felt her husband's gloved hand touch hers. She looked at Tormund and his eyes were wet but he did not cry. They watched their son reach out with a slender, cautious hand, and run it over the pure white bone. The wind ruffled his sunset hair; the afternoon sun cast the virgin snow around him in rose.

Gendry had told her, once, that Jon was not down there in the crypts. She still did not know where Jon was, and though she had found the remains of Drogon and Rhaegal here, she knew that Daenerys was not here, either.

Her bones were gone.

They would have to send a cart to take the dragons' remains later; Sansa and her husband and son turned back south as the sun began to set. They made camp before sunset and, in the dark of night, Sansa lay beside her husband and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

 

That night, warmed by her husband's body, and safe with the life kicking within her, Sansa dreamt that she was in a great city—perhaps it was King's Landing, though it did not look it—that was about to be under siege. She was hunting for something—at first she thought it was safety, but as she searched, she realized it was not safety that she was looking for.

Tall golden buildings with rippling terra cotta roofs shadowed her. She walked through the abandoned streets alone, listening to shutters slam; the muffle of voices behind closed doors and thick walls. She was looking for something, looking for something that she had not been able to find yet. Something or someone. What was it? She tried every door, her panic rising, as the world began to grow cold around her, and the winds became higher, harsher, around her. She needed to find it, whatever it was, and thought she might die if she did not. Something was coming for her, and she needed to find it—or them—before that horrible thing came...

She tried every door, screaming when she found each one locked. 

_Go back,_ the wind howled. 

_They're here,_ her heart told her. 

She knew that what she sought lay beyond one of these doors—if only she could find a key, or break one down, then she would find what she so desperately sought.  _They're here,_ she found herself sobbing. Her feet, bare to the stony, dusty road, began to bleed as she searched, running from door to door, pounding on them in wild desperation.  _Go back,_ the wind howled.  _You do not belong here,_ her heart told her. 

_But they're here,_ she sobbed. 

_But you do not belong here,_ her heart sobbed. 

Up ahead as she ran she heard more doors slam shut against the growing storm. She broke into a run, always failing to reach the doors before they locked forever. Her vision was blurred with tears but she ran anyway, even as the sky above her darkened and the air grew humid yet cold with the threat of the storm. She had to get inside, or she'd never survive the storm... 

At last, she found a door that opened.

It was at the very end. Doors along the way drew her notice, but this one was palest blue, and she knew it was an important door. To lay eyes on that shade of blue...where had she seen it before? It made her think of the dresses she had sewn in her childhood, before she had known grief. It was the precise blue, she realized, of the dress she had made to meet Joffrey. It was her door,  _her_ door. 

She froze before it, but touched the handle anyway, as she heard the rain begin behind her. 

Yet as soon as it swung open, she knew she should not enter.

_You do not belong here,_ her heart whispered, and she knew it was right. 

_But they're here,_ she realized, and her heart sobbed for that, too. 

She stared into the musty darkness, as the wind outside howled. Her eyes would not adjust to the darkness; she could not see what was inside.

She turned from the darkness, and shut the door again. When she turned back to the narrow street, each door seemed, suddenly, lovelier to her. Warmer. It was raining now, the world shimmering silver with rain, drenching her, but she was not cold. She walked back along the street, careless to the wind and shadow, and touched each door.

Love waited behind each one—they were here—but she would not enter.

Not just yet. 


End file.
